What additives and how often?
- Thread starter tarnold
- Start date
The only 'additives' that I use are regular waterchanges with RO/DI water along with a good salt mix, kalkwasser, food, and maybe the occasional calcium / alkalinity adjustment with calcium chloride and kent superbuffer dKH. You can also add phytoplankton, rotifers, copepods, baby brine shrimp, etc, which you can culture yourself with a little work. Personally, if you're going to add a supplement to your tank you should have a test kit that can measure what that supplement is doing to your water parameters. Some people add iron to their tanks and see some added benefit due to increased macroalgae growth. Check out http://www.advancedaquarist.com/ as well as their article archives and check out all the Chemistry and the Aquarium articles. There's some great information there. 
Shane
Shane
If you’re looking for some popularly used products for tank maintenance it's probably something like this;
1. Kalkwasser (German for lime water) makeup water dripped in at night.
2. Buffer.
3. ESV's B-ionic liquid A B solutions (good stuff for soft and hard corals IMO).
4. Calcium Reactor so you don't have to deal with the Calcium/Alkalinity balancing act anymore.
For the record I use a Reactor and still use B-ionic, just not nearly as much.
What you choose for your tank should depend largely on your animal types and load.
I wish someone would make this into a regular poll but you would have to be able to at least specify if you keep soft or hard corals.
1. Kalkwasser (German for lime water) makeup water dripped in at night.
2. Buffer.
3. ESV's B-ionic liquid A B solutions (good stuff for soft and hard corals IMO).
4. Calcium Reactor so you don't have to deal with the Calcium/Alkalinity balancing act anymore.
For the record I use a Reactor and still use B-ionic, just not nearly as much.
What you choose for your tank should depend largely on your animal types and load.
I wish someone would make this into a regular poll but you would have to be able to at least specify if you keep soft or hard corals.
well my lfs guy told me talked me into buying something called reef former (kalk), dkh buffer, strontium, magnesium, iodine, argonite and calcite. and gave me a write up of how to dose it. basically i add a little bit of one or two of those a day. is this wrong to do? i have only live rock and fish. should i just be using b-ionic?
These are the products I use in my reefs. I don't like to add alot of components to make a chemical soup which I used to do in the beginning...
1. Calcium/Alkalinity support: I use C-Balance because I deal in nanos and they dont have much consumption (no need for a reactor)
2. Dt's: I have seen a specific correlation in my systems between the amount and frequency of Dt's added, and the population of fanworms that will bloom and decline based on phytoplankton availability. Some larger, well established systems with a DSB dont need this kind of support. Smaller systems benefit from it.
3. Good quality protein input (food): I feed my corals HBJ Frog Pellets. The pods eat what is left over.
4. Iodide. Of course there is an ongoing battle about its usefulness as a supplement, many feel food additions supplies all that is needed. I have noticed another correlation in my systems between the amount of iodide (Kent) added and asexual reproduction in the corals. My water columns are especially small, so I feel this nutrient is easily stripped from the small water column and needs to be replaced.
Caulastrea has shown the most response here. I have logged a period of 4 months in which I added no Ia/dide to the system and fission among the heads was slow. After that, I supplemented two drops per week of Kents liquid iodide and in the next 4 month period the rate quadrupled, gaining ten new heads from the original branch. I -always- have better polyp extension supplementing Ia than without. My water column and stocking densities are not like most reefs, so much of this anecdotal evidence may not apply to all setups. I personally will continue to add iodide to my systems.
Nothing else, thats all Ive added for the past year in each of my reefs.
brandon429
1. Calcium/Alkalinity support: I use C-Balance because I deal in nanos and they dont have much consumption (no need for a reactor)
2. Dt's: I have seen a specific correlation in my systems between the amount and frequency of Dt's added, and the population of fanworms that will bloom and decline based on phytoplankton availability. Some larger, well established systems with a DSB dont need this kind of support. Smaller systems benefit from it.
3. Good quality protein input (food): I feed my corals HBJ Frog Pellets. The pods eat what is left over.
4. Iodide. Of course there is an ongoing battle about its usefulness as a supplement, many feel food additions supplies all that is needed. I have noticed another correlation in my systems between the amount of iodide (Kent) added and asexual reproduction in the corals. My water columns are especially small, so I feel this nutrient is easily stripped from the small water column and needs to be replaced.
Caulastrea has shown the most response here. I have logged a period of 4 months in which I added no Ia/dide to the system and fission among the heads was slow. After that, I supplemented two drops per week of Kents liquid iodide and in the next 4 month period the rate quadrupled, gaining ten new heads from the original branch. I -always- have better polyp extension supplementing Ia than without. My water column and stocking densities are not like most reefs, so much of this anecdotal evidence may not apply to all setups. I personally will continue to add iodide to my systems.
Nothing else, thats all Ive added for the past year in each of my reefs.
brandon429
liquid":2lt7nvs8 said:
Scientific American: August 2002 "Plankton vs. Global Warming" cover title; "The Ocean's Invisible Forest" article title.
Speaks to the incredible growth seen when phytoplankton receive Fe "injections". (Sorry, can't find my copy right now, but the article was written by Paul G. Falowski.) Interesting schtuff.
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