Do I need to dose for soft coral????

I am currently running a 40 gallon breeder with almost all soft corals. I was just wondering if I was to switch to all soft corals do I still need to dose cal, mg, and alk??? I am doing weekly water change with reef crystal salt mix from IO.

- thanks in advanced

 

With water changes weekly you most likely wouldn't need to dose. I would still test at least alk and keep dosing it if needed. Mag and Cal shouldn't be needed other than for coralline growth.

 

if you have mangroves you will need to mag dose but if not you should be fine with just the usual water changes.

 

What percentage WC are you doing? With reef crystals and softies you could probably stop dosing, but you would of course still want to keep an eye on it.

 

I gotta throw this out there....if all you have is softies and not LPS or SPS or anything calcified, you likely don't need to be spending the extra money on Reef Crystals, as a cheaper marine salt would work. You do not need to be dosing your tank as long as you do water changes regularly. Dosing is more for tanks with SPS, LPS, clams, and other organisms that use up calcium, magnesium, alkalinity, etc. at a fast pace.

 

There is not one "pat" answer here. Each tank takes on a life of its' own. You will have to test and determine what the consumption rate is of the various elements and take it from there.

 

i would drip kalkwasser for almost any tank... unless it stays stable above pH 8.1 day and night

this will provide more than enough cal for your tank, it will get used up by coralline... and you will more than likely want to add LPS at least at some point...

you dose just to keep things in the optimal range, no matter what you have in there... so it really doesn't matter what you've got or what you dose or how...

if you're cal levels are consistently being reduced below 400-450 then you need to add something be it aragonite, liquid calcium, kalkwasser, whatever... if not then it doesn't matter even if your tank is filled with acropora...

just test every couple weeks and make sure they are good levels... if so then who cares?

alkalinity and pH are the issues to be addressed more likely if you dont have hard corals... but coralline will use up cal... especially if you have a lot of it... crustaceans mollusks etc all use cal... anything with a hard shell

iodine should be maintained as well...

always check alk and pH i would check these at least once a week, cal/mag you can check probably less often...

bottom line, with a reef tank you always need to check the following, the * are more difficult to maintain and what most people struggle with... causes of nuisance algae and bad vertebrate/invertebrate health)

-*Nitrate (<1 ppm or as close to zero as possible, some debate)
-*pH (8.1-8.3, day AND in the middle of the night -check first thing AM, levels drop at night when Co2 levels go up)
-*Alkalinity (KH 8-12 most say closer to 8 )
-Calcium (400-450)
-Magnesium (~1200-1300)
-*Phosphate (<0.25ppm or as close to zero as possible)

other elements trace elements will be maintained by water changes, if you switch from reef crystals your pH will likely drop as well since it is OVER ph'ed (8.4) to maintain a constantly dropping pH

doesn't matter what you have in there... these values need to be within range.

 

I agree with every post above mine. +1 multiple times