Trouble with All For Reef

[rishma]

1.025

Salinity accuracy depends on the tool used and how it’s calibrated. What are you using in determine salinity?

 

[youclowntoomuch]

Salinity accuracy depends on the tool used and how it’s calibrated. What are you using in determine salinity?

refractometer calibrated with the calibration fluid

 

[painter1982]

I dose 20 ml per day in my 150 gallons tank… That seems like a lot.

I dose 42ml in my 60. 9.0 dkh, ~440 ca. sps dominant.

 

[rishma]

Salinity accuracy depends on the tool used and how it’s calibrated. What are you using in determine salinity?

refractometer calibrated with the calibration fluid

Ok. Probably good enough.

 

[rishma]

I dose 20 ml per day in my 150 gallons tank… That seems like a lot.

I dose 42ml in my 60. 9.0 dkh, ~440 ca. sps dominant.

That’s about 1dkH per day so pretty reasonable for SPS tank.

 

[PeterEde]

Ive been dosing all for reef at roughly 20 ml of solution per day in my 15 gallon nano tank.1.7 ML per 2 hours. I have mostly LPS and soft corals. Ive had nothing but issues keeping my parameters in check. For instance when testing today my calcium(500) and alk(20.0) are sky high while my magnesium is bottomed out(1200). Since starting this ive noticed my alk and cal tend to swing or be at opposite ends while my magnesium constantly stays bottomed out. It seems like it has done absolutely nothing to help with magnesium, and ive had to get red sea magnesium to bring it up. Should I stop dosing it all together? It seems like its doing more harm than good. Also it was mixed at a LFS so im having doubts that the guy doing it did it correctly. Thanks in advance.

I think your over dosing. Im following instructions and only dose 17ml into 425 lt tank

 

[PeterEde]

Instructions
To dose Tropic Marin's All-For-Reef, start with 5 ml of the liquid solution per 100 liters (26 US gallons) of aquarium volume daily, increasing by 2.5 ml per 100 liters weekly until stable alkalinity and calcium levels are reached, but do not exceed 25 ml per 100 liters daily.

 

[twentyleagues]

@youclowntoomuch How old is the tank? Do you have any corals? Are they growing? Do you have coralline algae growing? Any pics of the tank?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I agree with others you are highly over dosing. I would stop dosing all-together, and let the tank come back down to base line stats, and start testing and understanding your tank consumption better before you start dosing again.

using AFR requires frequent testing, it takes a few weeks of daily testing and adjusting the dosing amount to get it dialed in.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I presume the issues are understood now, but if anything needs clarification, please ask.

Summary is to stop dosing to let alk decline, and not measure magnesium for now.

 

[twentyleagues]

Starting dose is 5ml/26g of actual water volume. At 15g tank its probably half the volume of the starting dose. You are without a doubt dosing too much. Now this could be an actual dose if you have "large" sps colonies and tons of coralline, but I dont think you do. Also you are breaking up the dose while thats not something that is terrible to do it is going to make testing inaccurate and very hard on you. The numbers you posted are probably actually higher because of your split up dose. I tried to find pics of your tank looking back at your previous posts to figure out what kind of coral load you have, I found nothing. I would ditch auto dosing for the moment or just change the doser to dose the appropriate dose all at once this will allow you to test 24hrs later and see what your numbers are truly. Splitting up 20ml into 10-15 doses is compounding the issues. For reference I have a pretty high coral load tank actual volume is very close to 120g I dose 45ml of AFR. I dose this by hand with a 100ml plastic graduated beaker that I got from amazon in a bag of plastic beakers and cylinders for less than $10, very useful. I dose once a day at the highest lighting point. I test just before dosing. When I test its always at this time of the lighting schedule to help get the most accurate results. My tank volume is probably 10x yours is with a lot more corals (because of space) some days if I test I see my alk creep up a little and others its down a little. My alk fluctuates somewhere in the 8.2-9dkh range some of this could be test error or AFR not completely "transformed" or maybe my corals were just off that day or had/started a growth spurt. If alk starts to trend lower on multiple tests I bump up the dose by 2-3ml.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

To give you a different perspective, I have a 4 year old 15 gallon tank, its fully packed with softie's and lps, and I have never dosed a single thing into this tank, only weekly 5 gallon water changes. I don't even have any filtration on this tank. The corals are flourishing and coraline growing everywhere in the tank. A lot of new hobbyists think that dosing is part of the hobby, I don't agree with that, and would suggest to try to run your tank without dosing until you really truly need.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

To give you a different perspective, I have a 4 year old 15 gallon tank, its fully packed with softie's and lps, and I have never dosed a single thing into this tank, only weekly 5 gallon water changes. I don't even have any filtration on this tank. The corals are flourishing and coraline growing everywhere in the tank. A lot of new hobbyists think that dosing is part of the hobby, I don't agree with that, and would suggest to try to run your tank without dosing until you really truly need.

Where does the alkalinity come from for the coralline?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Where does the alkalinity come from for the coralline?

I use the coral pro salt, and I assume the weekly 35% water changes with this salt are sufficient? I have only 3 lps corals, the majority are zoa's mushrooms and leathers so I assume low alk consumption from the corals? I have 6 fish in the tank and I feed 3 times daily and no filtration.

To be honest I don't test much on this tank (my bad)

 

[BryanM]

I used the calculator on tropic marins site. something must have been wrong.

I Just used their calc for 15gallons, and it was 2.84ml / day, not 20ml.

Water changes to get things back in line, then re-evaluate how you want to maintain the tank long term.

 

[youclowntoomuch]

To give you a different perspective, I have a 4 year old 15 gallon tank, its fully packed with softie's and lps, and I have never dosed a single thing into this tank, only weekly 5 gallon water changes. I don't even have any filtration on this tank. The corals are flourishing and coraline growing everywhere in the tank. A lot of new hobbyists think that dosing is part of the hobby, I don't agree with that, and would suggest to try to run your tank without dosing until you really truly need.

I feel like I got bamboozled…… as someone new to the hobby it feels like products are being shoved down my throat. As time has gone on I’ve come to realize the minimal approach is best.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I use the coral pro salt, and I assume the weekly 35% water changes with this salt are sufficient? I have only 3 lps corals, the majority are zoa's mushrooms and leathers so I assume low alk consumption from the corals? I have 6 fish in the tank and I feed 3 times daily and no filtration.

To be honest I don't test much on this tank (my bad)

Ah, ok, yes, that effectively adds a lot.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I feel like I got bamboozled…… as someone new to the hobby it feels like products are being shoved down my throat. As time has gone on I’ve come to realize the minimal approach is best.

I would not say it is best, but it may be fine.