When would be a good time to start?

[Jisko]

So I read a lot about people dosing tanks and such but how do I know when I should be doing this? I have a frogspawn, acan, birds nest, candy cane, and two kenya trees that are doing great. I've had wonderful growth on my frog spawn, my kenya tree frags have tripled in size and the acan is fluffy as can be along with the color coming in great.

I ask because I took advantage of the sale WWC had to day and purchased 5 corals. They will be here tomorrow so I'm spending tonight doing a little extra research on the corals I got along with figuring out the chemistry of my tank. I'll provide a list below of the corals I purchased along with a list of what's in the tank before the new corals are added.

If anyone has any recommendations please let me know. I've started looking into kalkwasser and other forms of dosing through my ATO. I'm also gonna begin doing weekly water checks on the different parameters to get a better idea of whats really happening.

on a side note what should I look out for if the chemistry begins to go a little crazy once I add the new corals?

New corals being added:
Neon Green Micromussa Lord
Green Rim Rainbow Platygyra
Tyree Aequituberculata
Neon Duncan
Tubbs Stellata Montipora

Corals currently in the tank:
2x Kenya Tree
Red Birds Nest
Frog Spawn
Rainbow Acan
Striped Candy Cane
also a few little pieces of a leather that was already growing on live rock that I got.

Livestock:
2x Clownfish
Brittle star(This will be moved to sump or given away at some point)
a large variety of snails that were moved over to take care of a little algae bloom


All comments and opinions are welcomed as I'm learning as I go like most of us

 

[p7willm]

The first thing to do is to test for Ca Mg and Alk. Mg is not used but has to be there for corals to take Ca and Alk and make calcium carbonate for their skeletons. If you have just a little coral the new water from changes may supply all the Ca and Alk you need. The next step, if you need more is to add kalkwasser to your ATO water. If you have a bunch of corals you might not be able to add enough with kalkwasser and you will have to start dosing. Base what you do on the levels in the tank not what life you have in it.

Test now and decide what you want to do. If you are low you can bring it up with a 2 part and then try to keep it up with kalk.

Make changes slowly. The stuff in your tank likes steady a lot more than a value. For example if your Ca is 300 bring it up to around 450 slowly. The happiest stuff is in water steady around 450, next happiest is steady at any level, least happy is stuff with fluctuating Ca.

 

[Jisko]

The first thing to do is to test for Ca Mg and Alk. Mg is not used but has to be there for corals to take Ca and Alk and make calcium carbonate for their skeletons. If you have just a little coral the new water from changes may supply all the Ca and Alk you need. The next step, if you need more is to add kalkwasser to your ATO water. If you have a bunch of corals you might not be able to add enough with kalkwasser and you will have to start dosing. Base what you do on the levels in the tank not what life you have in it.

Test now and decide what you want to do. If you are low you can bring it up with a 2 part and then try to keep it up with kalk.

Make changes slowly. The stuff in your tank likes steady a lot more than a value. For example if your Ca is 300 bring it up to around 450 slowly. The happiest stuff is in water steady around 450, next happiest is steady at any level, least happy is stuff with fluctuating Ca.

First test I did was the KH was very low, secondly I trested calcium which was really high... I have no idea why its in the 500s. I do a water change weekly of about 10% using reef crystals :\

phosphates are around .25

 

[Jisko]

So a little update

I been looking into setting up a kalkwasser drip station that will do 1 drop per 5 seconds which is a little under 1g of water a day.

Once this is started and the corals grow out of the frag stage I'll upgrade to a dosing system and dose 2 part cal/alk and also MG.

I'm also looking into ordering the Red Sea kit:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004FUJ5NE/ref=crt_ewc_img_gw_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

That sounds like a fine plan.

 

[Jisko]

That sounds like a fine plan.

Alright thank you ^_^