Dosing and Growth?

When you started dosing, how much of a difference did you note in coral growth. I'm finally just starting to dose now ... my tank is about 18 months old. My tank is medium - heavily stocked with a breakdown like this : (30% sps 50% lps and 20% zoos) the only dosing the tank got is what was replenished with bi-weekly 20% water changes.

My SPS grow ... but we're talking like a cm every two months, lps is very slow as well ... and my zoos expand at an alarming rate.

I'm just wondering what kind of improvement I should notice with balanced cal, alk, and mag long term!

 

SPS should take off, LPS will pick up and softies will keep on keeping on.

 

your sps will really pick up... if you get your dosing down to a science, you will have stable levels... you will see noticeable growth on your sps. I can take weekly pictures and there is usually some type of obvious new growth or branching going on.
You will be satisfied with your sps growth

 

excellent ... I am right excited now!

Now I just need to make sure I get it all correct and stable ... going to be a lot of pita testing for the next little while

 

i used to test err week, now that im back on my game ima start doing the same, until i get the new setup on cruise control

 

This is what I'm hoping for as well. Invest a little cash, and invest the time with the tedious testing ... so I know exactly what my system is using ... and let the pumps and timers do the rest.

this will obviously still require weekly - biweekly testing for the simple fact that with growth will come higher calcium demand and increases will need to be made to keep up with the systems needs

 

when you are getting your levels right to begin with, test like every other day or every three days to see the effects... not every day

 

+1 on maintaining levels being a very important part of getting the best SPS growth

I did the test every other day routine , but found the differences encountered could just as easily be explained by user error rather than actual demand

testing twice a week is a better option - but when you 1st start you dont actually need to IME
If you are noticing a drop in levels due to demand then all you need to do is work out how much additive you need in order to compensate for said demand

these are the steps I used

1 ) after a water change - maybe 2 hours later test the big 3 - if they are within acceptable range / your targets leave it
2) week after - test again before water change - that will tell you your weekly demand
3) if the results you got the 1st week where not at your target levels - make additions ( stay within the max increase suggested for any 24 hour period - thus dont increase mag by more than 100ppm or Calc by more than 20ppm or DKH by more than 1 etc)
4) once you have the levels where you have targetted them - wait 1 week and measure again - the difference once again is the weekly usage
5) if your weekly usage is for example - 40ppm Mag, 20ppm, calc and 1 degree of DKH - work on a dosing scheme to A increase by those amounts (2 days would be enough to compensate for example used ) and the B introduce that amount over the following week divided by as many days as possible

thus in my tank I know I will lose 1DKH and 20ppm calcium per week
I know how much of the additives I use , I need to compensate for those amounts
I then split those amounts up over the 7 day period so I am replacing whats being used on a daily basis, rather than compensating on a weekly basis

I will admit that I expected all my SPS corals for some unexplained reason to drain all the ions out of my water inside 1 week ( hence I tested twice per week) it didnt happen
in fact you may be surprised just how little is being used when you 1st start.

Steve