The Puffer Forum

What size is your tank?

You could probably get away with just water changes. Only dose what you can test for and know what the range should be with in. If you are just keeping a FOWLR and easy inverts you should be fine with just testing and checking SG, temp, ph and water changes. As you start adding corals and other inverts you will need to check calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium. Here is a good article on this:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php

To me it was rather daunting when I started as chemistry is not my thing.

I would say the first and easiest thing to start with is kalkwasser. You can get one of these:
http://www.marinedepot.com/Marine_Depot ... GT-vi.html
and use it as a auto top off full of kalkwasser. It will mainline good ph/alk/calcium, check your levels to make sure you are not overdosing, but many people including me use it for all of the top off water for the tank.

Ideally you would be dosing two part and mag as well, bulk reef supply has a great deal:
http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/pro ... rge-1.html
It is kind of a pain because it needs to be done daily, and the pumps to automate it are 100$ each and you need 2...

Calcium reactors will also help but I havent looked into them because of the cost.

I would highly recommend running carbon and GFO 24/7. Check out bulk reefsupply for media and reactors.


(what kinda jeep do you have? I have a WJ with a 3" iron rock off road lift)

Add nothing---WC will add anything you need to the tank for what you have right now.

Pufferpunk wrote:Add nothing---WC will add anything you need to the tank for what you have right now.

+1

The salt water mix already has all the trace elements in it, just do your regular water changes to replenish what your small number of corals use (same as I do on my FOWLR with 3 or 4 corals).

For the 90g "Softy Reef Tank" with way to many corals I dose about half the recomended amount of the different Kent Marine trace elements, just one piece of the fancy dosing equipment would cost me more than a lifetime supply of Kent Marine stuff ( I am an old man and a lifetime supply may not be all that much).

Ok, thanks for the info. I did a WC today, and I'm going to try to just do a 5g WC every week.

Mek0ng,
The tank's a 30g with a 10g sump. My intention is FOWLR, but since I have life, I'd like to keep it.

My Jeep's an 06 TJ Sport w/D44 & almost bone stock, but the warranty just ended, so I'm looking to start modding.


Thanks,

-Rob

Woodbutcher, You should just make your own:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php#4

Pufferpunk wrote:Woodbutcher, You should just make your own:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php#4

Dropped out of school way before the "Alchemy" classes, but I will keep the info, might get hard corals instead of just the easy ones some day.

Thank You for the link.

I make the alk & I use Pedlow pellets (calcium chloride--driveway heat) for calcium.

it seems you need to make a HUGE batch doing that DIY method, worth it if you had something like a 250g or larger display, but seems questionably worth it with more typical tank sizes. ~35$ for 2gallons of two part, (two little fish or ESV) seems worth it to me...

Pufferpunk, do you not use kalkwasser?

I make 1g alk at a time. It lasts my 100g about 3 months. No, I don't drip kalk.