Reef nutrition

What else do you dose beside two parts?

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nly04

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I am dosing BRS two parts (calcium chloride for Calcium and soldium bicarbonate for Alkalinity). I have enough additives for 10 years so I am not switch to Calcium reactor any time soon. My coral happy and grow, but some have nice color and some look pale. I seen people recommend to dose iodine, trace elements...etc..to be honest it very confuse because there are many other good things. I keep my Salinity at 1.026, Alk at 8, Cal 420. I don't dose Magnesium but it jumping around 1350-1450. I am using Fritz pro salt blue box.

Is there any product that include iodine and good trace element that will not affect Salinity, Cal and Alk?
Anyone dosing two parts out there, do you dose anything else beside cal/alk?
 
I use seachem reef fusion which has all those lovely trace elements in the calcium part so I only have to dose that to keep things stable. I believe b-ionic is the same deal as well as a couple others. That’s why I chose it as it’s a true 2 part system, not “2 parts” but add all this other stuff as well
 
I use Acropower (amino acids in general) I don't know if they do anything, but it's worth a shot. Kind of hard to realistically judge when everything is in a relatively new system, with new lighting, as to whether or not it actually "works"
 
I use Tropic Marin’s All For Reef.
The DIY kit has Alk, Cal, Mag and two bottles of trace elements, Pro Trace A- and Pro Trace K+.
I imagine you could just dose the trace elements itself.
 
Coral reefer said:
Where are your nitrate/phosphate? If nitrate is too low thing can be pale.
Click to expand...
My Phosphate is 0.04 and Nitrate is very low undetect or 1 max. I saw the other thread that dosing nitrate but I am not planning to go that route yet. I add a few more fish in hope to increase nitrate. I put 10 kg of Siporax and 3 big pcs of Marinepure in the sump when I set it up so Nitrate is always low to begin with.
 
My nitrates are (were) undetectable too, with rather high phosphates 0.1 (haven't tested in a while), don't think my corals are particularly pale. Although nitrate product might match consumption so "zero" may be really misleading.
 
Like @The_Lazy_Reefer i was dosing a true “two part” in b ionic. It has most of the trace elements you need and also has magnesium. I don’t know anything about seachems stuff, but I always tell people to buy the 5 gallon buckets of b ionic 2 part of they don’t want to have to worry about anything. And it’s not much more expensive than BRS stuff.

I usually am only low on iodine when testing.

now I’m switching over to a cal reactor with pure media and tritons infusion trace elements. But I have no testing to back up this method yet.
 
I’m one of the few who still uses the Aquavitro line. Fuel , alk , mag. I don’t think to many people use the line but I’ve always liked it
 
I used to use Aquavitro salt, but wasn't a big fan of their policy to only sell in stores and as the local stores dried up so went my desire to use that product anymore.
 
Zero nitrates result in pale coral. Eventually zero nitrates lead to STN, then dead coral, but that takes a lot longer.
I've run my tank at "zero" before, but with high input, so there wasn't a bad shortage. Even with that, things perked up quite a bit and grew a lot faster when I started dosing KNO3. Also note that "zero" on an API kit may well be 1 PPM, which is a world of difference from a shortage.
Do not dose anything you don't test. This includes iodine.
Fish are not alchemists, they do not produce nitrates. Food input produces nitrates. If you want to increase your nitrates via food then feed more. You don't need to add more fish for this to happen. In fact if you were to add more fish but not change your feeding you still would not have higher nitrates. That said, KNO3 (or Mg(NO3)2, or whatever) is really really cheap based on how little you actually need to use.

I've dosed a number of things over the years depending on the needs of my systems. When I've run short on nitrate I dose that. When I run a surplus I don't. If I find potassium chronically low (high algae growth on a system without water changes for example) I'll dose it. If I don't have that issue I stop.
 
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