ESV Dosing - Refresher on calculating dose needed

Hey all I could use a refresher from the ESV 2-part crowd.. my new frags are soaking up the mag and calcium at a faster rate and my daily dose routine needs to change...

So how do I determine loss over time and how to calculate what to add based on that... so say my water volume is around 50 gallons and my alk has dropped to 3.43 from 4 and calcium from 425 to 375 in about a week's time - do you do a quick fix to bring the numbers in line first and then determine the rate of consumption? How do you plan for the week ahead?

I currently am dripping magnesium - it went from a high of 1550 (oops) to about 900 in a little over two weeks time from what I can tell. I would like to keep it at 1400.

Thanks in advance..

matt

 

Anybody help me out here? I recall a Peredhil thread on this I think... might have to dig a bit..

 

Ok - I just spent a couple hours reading this small book in its entirety:
http://www.3reef.com/forums/water-chemistry/2-part-dosing-vs-reactors-74496.html

That was a great read, if it is not a sticky, it will be in a few seconds. I applaud every 3reefer on that thread. That thread demonstrates what I love about 3reef - most of the time, people can express themselves and have different opinions without getting bashed. 8) That is really impressive in a 15 page thread. I love it.

And I learned a great deal.

Although I still regret selling my PM calcium reactor. I think I will try auto-dosing the big 3 with some of the methods mentioned in that thread.

That said, I still have a question about consumption rates as stated in the 1st post here - is it as simple as taking letting things go for a week and noting the drops and dividing by the number of days? Or should I just test and adjust with the auto-doser? Both?

matt

 

In this instance take the difference and divide by seven if you are dosing daily. Then increase your dosing by what the directions say to make up the difference. So if 1 ounce per 20 gallons will increase your CA by 10ppm and you need to increase your daily dose in your tank by 7ppm you will need (7ppm/10ppm) X (50/20) = .7 x 2.5 = 1.75 oz additional per day to meet your needs.

 

It's almost silly how I came to dose with my BRS peristaltic dosers. I spent a couple of weeks testing daily, but began doing water changes during that time out of necessity--which made it impossible to accurately detect consumption rates.

YMMV, but if you're not doing water changes weekly, you could just test daily for 10 days or so, until you note a consistent drop. You might have to take averages.

What I learned to do, was once I hit my desired params of 7 dKH, 440 Cal, and 1350 mag--I began to dose 1/4 cup (60 ml.) of alk and cal overnight. That's for a 90G, so you'd use much less for your nano. I use an Apex controller, and the dosers administer about 1 ml./minute. Anyways, I forced myself to forego testing more than once a week. Each Sunday, before my water change I test the big three.

I simply add or subtract a minute or two to alk--Holmes-Farley suggests in one of his articles to get Alk in line first, and not to chase calcium around. After a gallon of the first two are used, add a whole gallon of mag. You can do this over a few days, or average it out, i.e. add a cup a week or thereabouts.

In a nutshell, I allowed trial and error to be my guide and it's working very well. My params are stable for the first time since '08!

 

I use esv 2 part with esv mg.



Matt how often are you dosing. By right with your sps it should be done on a daily basis. Yes doing it manually is not fun.

The BRS pumps work great on a timer or controller dosing a ml/minute like Sparky stated.

With my tank Im in the process of dialing in the numbers with my dosing. even though I have very little coral.

I do my testing every sunday BEFORE my water change. to see where my big 3 are. Then I make my adjustments to my controller programming to feed more or less. I am pretty close to having it dialed in for my tank at the moment. only about two weeks in.

A good starting point with the esv on your neo nano would be 20 ml a day on each CA and alk. Then adjust accordingly to your numbers.

MG is a bit more tricky since I only check those numbers every other week on my tank before. Have yet to start dosing mg on my tank this time. Will check my mg this weekend.

You definitely do not want large swings like that Matt. otherwise youll be stressing your coral. Especially when dosing. you dont want to add a weeks worth of dosing in one day. Thats a large jump.

Breaking down your numbers from the past weeks drop..... Mathematically this is what they break down to

Alk - over a week it droped .57 meq/l = .08 a day
Ca - over a week it dropped 50ppm = 7ppm a day
MG - over a week it droppef 650ppm = 93ppm a day

I know esv has the dosing numbers on how many ml for x amount gallons will raise it x

But to get your numbers back up... do it slowly. Good practice and its easier on your sps.

Food for thought.

 

Thank you all very much. K+
I will adsorb this all in the AM and hit you back.

matt

 

You been hangin' around the ion exchange resins too long.

 

lol k+

 

lol! Maybe I have

So I am about to do another round of tests... before this thread I dripped a bunch of mag. I want to see where I am at now. I also did a little alk afterward and some calcium.

@tatted4ever - I am dosing daily and my routine of a cup (30 mil) each of alk and calcium had been holding numbers well until lately. That last test in my 1st post was the first big swing I have had in a while.

I will definitely be wary of big adjustments after all my reading since yesterday and try to fine tune.

One X factor here is that I have not done a water change in over 3 weeks. I would like to do one. So rather than completely dial in the water now. I may do minor adjustments and try to do more corrections with the new water which would take less supplements to adjust than the aquarium. I would like to do a 10 gallon water change. If this sounds good to you all, I will make the water today and do the change tomorrow after it settles.

Regardless I am going to do another round of tests right now.

matt

EDIT - UPDATE - As I was doing the mag test I realized I had fubbed the last test by messing up a step - this is why it showed so low. Now by doing a lot of mag to 'fix' this last night I have send my mag skyrocketing toward 2000! My alk looks like it spiked too - I am initiating the water change sequence immediately to dilute my mess. Ugh, I think I just learned a lesson about doing another test if I get a result that is way off to make sure I did the steps right.