Supplements for corals

I'm thinking about getting some mushrooms and polyps sometime next month, and read that they need certain trace minerals and stuff to survive. I was wondering if I should buy this Kent Marine Combo Pack/starter kit. It come with Coral Vite, Essential Elements, Iron & Manganese, Liquid Calcium, Microvert, Pro Tech Coat Marine, Strontium & Molybdenum, Tech Iodine, Tech Magnesium, Tech D, Pro Buffer dKh and ProClear (Kent Marine Combo Pack/Starter Kit). Do I need all of these?
I have a 20gal tank with a RBTA, clown, damsel, and firefish atm with a small clean-up crew. reading are 0 for ammonium, nitrates, nitrites, 1.024 sal, phosphate 0, calcium 450ppm, and forgot to write the results for magnesium and KH but remember that the numbers were good according to the manual.

 

With shrooms, leathers, etc. You will get all the trace elements you'll ever need through weekly or bi-weekly water changes using a decent brand salt mix. It's when you get into stony type corals that you would need to concern yourself with the buffering system CA/MG/ALK aspect, with the corals you mentioned I would just concentrate on good husbandy and a little TLC to get them to thrive.

 

Hello, your "softies" will benefit from Iodine (like Kent Marine Iodine) and the Strontium/Molybdenum. You must buy a good Iodine test though and be real carefully with it as it is easy to overdose if not testing. The coral vite is good. The kit looks good although the Iron & Manganese is not essential and Iron is another one of those elements that has to be watched carefully. I would just get the Iodine, Strontium/Molybdenum. That is all I add besides Calc (Kent Marine 2 part, Tech CB) and Mag (Kent Marine Tech M).

 

+1 You could keep mushrooms alive in a glass of water so I don't see the need for any supplements. I never added anything to my tank(s) when I kept softies and they did just fine. Save your money.

 

here is my 2 pennies on supplements, again.... sorry guys ;D


Just use a high quality salt with your regular water changes and you'll be fine. No need to dose anything unless you know exactly what your dosing for. Try reading the coral propagation book by Anthony Calfo, It goes into detail about the specific requirements of each species....as i said before i strongly agree with the idea that supplements are a waste of $$ though if you have hard corals its a no brainer to dose Mg, Ca and some form of Alkalinity. For minor species, WCs are the way to go. Most of the other supplement products out there are total crap IMO. My favorites are the "all in one" additives. I wonder how they get enough Ca, Mg and Carbonate plus the dozens of other things they list on their labels to all co-exist in a tiny little 6 oz bottle without precipitation? My guess is they are selling slightly concentrated synthetic sea water which does in fact have all those elements. And someone has already gone to the trouble of mixing it together into a powdered form too ;D

 

As mentioned, you get all of your essential elements from a good quality salt mix. Most of those additives for essential elements contain calcium and magnesium, so you can quicky throw them out of balance.

As for keeping zoanthids and other polyps. They dont need anything. You can target feed some of them if you to, but its not needed. I get excellent color and growth out of all of my polyps just from using a quality salt.

 

i just use Strontium/Molybdenum for my softies

 

Are you guys testing for Strontium and Molybdenum???

 

you beat me to the punch i was going to pm you asking should i be test that too:-[

i use red sea pro salt and from what you and amcarrig said, thats all i need so am not going to use it anymore. i just got it 3days ago

 

The levels required are so low that by the time you do your water change, you havent lost a noticible amount.