Weird situation with magnesium

[Porcupine Reefer]

In the past month I beat a severe dinoflagellate problem and moved forward to testing calcium, magnesium and alkalinity. when I tested calcium it read 400, and alkalinity read 9. but when I tested magnesium with the Salifert magnesium test kit, I was only seeing pink and no blue. I tested the magnesium twice and the water in the test tube stayed pink both times, did not change to blue, I ended up using the full 1 ml syringe both times with no change. I looked up what happens when you have low and high magnesium, but despite what I've read i'm not seeing any bad occurrences in my tank. My lps are fine and fully open, my green star polyp colony is completely open, and all my aquarium inhabitants are ok and seeing no issues with them. When I last did a water change it was back in October, and I did 25% water changes weekly using fritz rpm salt, haven't done another one since I did the necessary steps to beat the dinos. I bought tropic Marin all for reef recently, should I dose it or should I do something else entirely? I also wanted to confirm that I did all the steps right for the Salifert test kit and I still got no reading.

 

[rishma]

All-for-reef is a good product. Suggest dosing based on your alkalinity consumption.

Magnesium test kits are so error prone as to be not worth using at all. Suggest you read this.

Just say NO to magnesium testing: RMM is born

OK, this thread has been many years in the making, and I'm posting it here since folks in the chem forum are probably already tired of all the threads relating to problematic magnesium testing. I'm going to propose a method, let's call it the Randy Magnesium Method, or RMM for short. All good...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Sam7]

In the past month I beat a severe dinoflagellate problem and moved forward to testing calcium, magnesium and alkalinity. when I tested calcium it read 400, and alkalinity read 9. but when I tested magnesium with the Salifert magnesium test kit, I was only seeing pink and no blue. I tested the magnesium twice and the water in the test tube stayed pink both times, did not change to blue, I ended up using the full 1 ml syringe both times with no change. I looked up what happens when you have low and high magnesium, but despite what I've read i'm not seeing any bad occurrences in my tank. My lps are fine and fully open, my green star polyp colony is completely open, and all my aquarium inhabitants are ok and seeing no issues with them. When I last did a water change it was back in October, and I did 25% water changes weekly using fritz rpm salt, haven't done another one since I did the necessary steps to beat the dinos. I bought tropic Marin all for reef recently, should I dose it or should I do something else entirely? I also wanted to confirm that I did all the steps right for the Salifert test kit and I still got no reading.

if you alk is not dropping and staying good with water changes then you dont need to dose at all. Meaning your coral load isnt big enough to need extra alk dosing to keep it from lowering

 

[Sam7]

In the past month I beat a severe dinoflagellate problem and moved forward to testing calcium, magnesium and alkalinity. when I tested calcium it read 400, and alkalinity read 9. but when I tested magnesium with the Salifert magnesium test kit, I was only seeing pink and no blue. I tested the magnesium twice and the water in the test tube stayed pink both times, did not change to blue, I ended up using the full 1 ml syringe both times with no change. I looked up what happens when you have low and high magnesium, but despite what I've read i'm not seeing any bad occurrences in my tank. My lps are fine and fully open, my green star polyp colony is completely open, and all my aquarium inhabitants are ok and seeing no issues with them. When I last did a water change it was back in October, and I did 25% water changes weekly using fritz rpm salt, haven't done another one since I did the necessary steps to beat the dinos. I bought tropic Marin all for reef recently, should I dose it or should I do something else entirely? I also wanted to confirm that I did all the steps right for the Salifert test kit and I still got no reading.

you have to count how much is left in the syringe and view the chart to figure mag level in the instructions chart

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If you really want to test magnesium (I don't and generally do not recommend it for the reasons suggested in the link above; I just dose it), try the kit on some new salt water.