Maintainence Tips

Which kind of lights do you have????

As stated, you need Ca raised, and Mg and Kh readings need be posted. Your not helping us help you. I will be the one, posting pictures would be really helpful as maybe your percieving the situation as worse than it is you just need to let go and let us see.

 

Merely increasing your salinity from 1.020 to 1.025~1.026 will increase the Calcium, Magnesium, Alkalinity (and hopefully your pH as well)

In a softy tank, Calcium and Magnesium aren't that much of a concern. However, the Alkalinity and pH are VERY important.

 

IME my LPS lost color when Mg was low. Frogspawn and Donut Coral to be specific.

 

Let me clarify. If one does waterchanges to a proper Specific Gravity, your Calcium and Magnesium should always be in pretty good shape because MOST softies don't use either element. However, even in a softy tank, Alkalinity is important to "buffer" the proper amount of pH.

Both of the corals you are talking about are LPS corals and pull Calcium, Strontium, Magnesium, and Alkalinity out of the water to build their skeleton. As a result, being low in Ca, Sr, or Mg are much more important in your situation.

 

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I am measuring with a hydrometer. If my salinity is 1.02 should I be topping off with salt water till I reach the desired level ?
You are right. My test kit is old. Believe it or not in a city of 200 000 + people, we have only 2 reef stores.The best test kit I could find, measures calcium, carbonate hardness,phosphate & nitrate. Is that enough ? I looked in a catalogue I usually order from but each test is sold separately. That could prove expensive unless I could narrow down the tests I would need to perform. As to the pic, I already mentioned that. I'll go over what I was told before, but I really did not understand it.
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All LPS use these elements. That is why I used my example. I did weekly wc with IO at that time and had very low Mg. I switched to Red sea coral pro and noticed instant improvements.

You defiantly need to get that salt level up. Make sure your meter is clean however. Those swing ARM units get build up on the ARM and give false readings.

 

Yes, topping off with SW will likely do a good job of slowly bringing up your salinity. Just be sure to check it about an hour or so after every top off to closely monitor how it increases.

You are almost always better off buying equipment off the internet as the prices are usually unbeatable. That being said - the most important test kits are:

pH
Alk
Calcium
Magnesium
Ammonia
Nitrate

After that:
Strontium, Idoine, Copper, and Others are secondary.

I prefer Salifert Test kits as they are well accepted to be very accurate and they are also easy to use and easy to read. They also tend to give a higher resolution which means more precise answers for you.

Especially when you are dealing with a small tank you will want to keep track of these parameters.

But what everyone says about water changes being good enough for dosing a small, soft coral dominated tank is true IME. I had a 14 BC for two years before upgrading to a 120DT. I never dosed anything in the 14BC. I only did regular water changes. That worked really well for me.

 

I tend to disagree on the necessity of the ammonia kit, but it definitely doesn't hurt. My view as such that if you are not overstocked or overfeeding, it should always be zero.

However, you definitely need to add Phosphate to the list of essentials.

 

Actually, thinking about it again, you are right. Ammonia is not going to be an issue in an understocked tank. I also agree that Phosphate is to be added to the list of essentials.


Thanks for clarifying that!!!