Trace Element Addition/Maintenance

[JohnS_323]

I have a few questions about adding/maintaining trace elements in our system. Right now we're running an ARM/Dolomite mix through a CR-6 Dual Stage Ca Reactor. The ratio is about 10 cups of ARM to 1 cup of Dolomite. We spent a lot of time mixing them together so I'm pretty sure it's a homogeneous mix. Our Ca and Alk numbers appear to be in line but the Mg tends to be somewhat low. I've heard that the Dolomite is good for raising Mg but it's not keeping it in line with the others. Is it possible that we don't have enough mixed in?

I've also heard that people use crushed coral instead of ARM. Does that do a better job of maintaining trace elements? And if so, would you add it to the ARM mix or use it to replace the ARM mix? (Sadly) I have a bunch of skeletons that I can break up and use to fill one of the two chambers if you think it would help.

Any input would be appreciated.

 

[Carlo]

John I went down this road a while back and tried crushed coral but ended up going back to ARM media. I just sucked it up and went with a Mg supplement that I'd dose every couple of days. It was far easier overall.

I will tell you however that I haven't had to dose anything to my new tanks yet and I think it has to do with the ongoing daily water change thing we talked about briefly at the meeting using the dosing pumps on a timer. I think adding in the new salt water daily is taking care of the minor nutrients enough that they are staying good. I'll keep an eye on things as I continue to add corals and whatnot but for now it looks good just doing this.

Carlo

 

[kabal2]

john i think it depends of how often you do water changes, in mine i check mag once and week and just dose with kent supplement, is easier, and i do water changes 2 times a week

Gabe

 

[mott768]

John, what salt do you use? I was using IO and could never get the mag where I wanted, someone suggested to switch back to reef cryst. since I have my mag has been right in line. Also I used the ESV Mag additive to get it where it needed to be since it was so low using the IO, I haven't added the ESV since (a couple months now)

 

[Phyl]

We use RC. We do have a lot of LPS in the tank though, and my guess is that they go through it faster than the average stick/shroom/zoo.

 

[Carlo]

RC is pretty good salt. It's available just about everywhere (unlike Tropic Marin Pro) and has a medium price tag. I'm using it exclusively right now and I'm pretty happy with it.

I used to mix about 1/3 RC and 2/3 TMP to get a lower alk level because of the amount of kalk I used to have to add to the tank to keep the PH up. My old apartment was air tight and I had a carbon dioxide problem.

Now I don't have that problem so I can run RC exclusively and save a few bucks on salt. It adds up quick when you go through a lot of water.


John the LPS corals will use up more calcium and Mg then other types of corals (basically speaking). If you have a top off water container you can add your Mg supplement right into your RO/DI top off water. It's just a matter of figuring out how much you need to dose weekly of the Mg supplement and how much top off water you are adding weekly. Then with a little math you can dose your top off water container once a week and know your tank is getting a little every day.

I like to try and premix my supplements whenever possible and have them dosed daily since it makes for a more stable running system. Certain supplements you can premix together if you know the proportion your tank needs over x number of days.

Carlo

 

[JohnS_323]

We used TM Pro for a while and honestly never saw any difference in our system so we switched back to RC. It's a pretty good salt for the money.

Carlo, my top off process is completely automated. I have a float switch in the sump that draws water from a 55g drum when needed. That drum has a float switch in it and is hooked to my RO/DI so it refills itself automatically. Based on that, how would I calculate how much mag supplement to add?

Ideally, I want to do something with the reactor that adds mag and trace elements automatically. That's why I added the dolomite. I was initially told to "add a handful" to keep mag levels up. That was back when I was using a smaller reactor with less volume. Maybe I just need to bump up the quantity a bit.

The other thing I'm thinking about doing is incorporating some sort of in line kalk-top off system. Phyl got some plans from Billy that look promising but I'm not in the DIY mindset these days!

 

[kabal2]

http://jjgeisler.com/reeftank/diy_kalkwasser_reactor.htm , john this link is for a dyi kalk reactor is pretty easy to build, i made one like 3 years ago and work pretty good, you dont have to use acrylic, you can make it all with pvc, if you need a hand with it let me know i can help you

Gabe

 

[JohnS_323]

Thanks a lot Gabe. That one looks pretty good, too.

I just did some research and I found that the right mix in the reactor should be 80% media and 20% dolomite. I think my first step is going to be to bump up the ratio and see if that helps. I'll dose B-Ionic and a wet Mag solution to get the levels up to where they need to be and then see if the reactor can maintain it.

After that, maybe I'll make one of those kalkwasser reactors. Then I'll stop and enjoy the tank . . . HONEST!

 

[Carlo]

<snip>
After that, maybe I'll make one of those kalkwasser reactors. Then I'll stop and enjoy the tank . . . HONEST!

Who are you kidding? I basically don't know you but from our brief conversations and reading your posts know your are a tinkerer like myself. Once you solve this "issue" you'll find something else to automate or "fix".

Anyway, what I do is to have 3 separate "reserve" tanks. One is pure RO/DI water, one is premixed salt water and the other is my top off water. Since I know how much trace elements to add per gallon or 5 gallon bucket, I manually move RO/DI water over to my topoff water container (brute 44 gallon trash cans for all 3) via a 5 gallon bucket and dos X amount of trace element per 5 gallons of RO/DI water moved to the topoff can. It may sound complex but it's really not. It's one of those things you can do in your sleep. A capfull of this, 2 capfulls of that type thing. Really the hardest thing is knowing what trace elements can be mixed together.

With so much water volume as we both have a little extra here or there really doesn't hurt anything like on a small water volume system. A simple test once a week or every other week will let you know if you need to increase a little or skip an addition of something to your topoff can. Through a little trial an error you pretty quickly figure out the right proportions to add. For some people this might seem like "extra" work and maybe it is but my thought is to add minimal amounts daily as apposed to larger doses weekly or biweekly to keep the tank parameters as stable as possible on a daily basis.

Carlo

PS keep me informed how the switch to 80/20 works for you. I got to 75/25 but then had other issues with the ARM media breaking down to quickly so I went back to 100% ARM media and started dosing the Mg which ended up being cheaper for me anyway.

That's the other thing especially on bigger systems. Sometimes the easy way ends up costing more in the long run so you go back to tinker mode using the cheap costing solution and figure out a way to automate it!

 

[JohnS_323]

Thanks for the info, Carlo. I'll continue to dose my Mg solution a little bit every day to get it up to where I want and then see if the dolomite can maintian it. The rough part is that everything needs to happen so slowly. It just seems to take forever with little measurable progress on a daily basis. I'll figure it out, though.

Thanks again for the info.

And you nailed it, the "I'm done" comment was abolutely dripping with sarcasm! I'll relax when I finally burn out on this hobby and move onto the next one. But then that one will occupy all of my time!

 

[Carlo]

I hear ya. I'm a hobby jumper too, but I tend to keep my old hobbies while picking up new ones to occupy my "free" time.

At least with a reef tank you've got fish to learn about, many different types of corals to learn about, plumbing to play with and equipment selections and purchases to contemplate. It has enough to keep you from getting bored. Oh did I mention you can actually view your work/hobby (aka the display tanks(s) on occasion)?

 

[blange3]

John,

What are your numbers?

If you need some MG supplement, LMK. I can mix a gallon of Randy's recipe for you.


I feel your pain about the slow process of balancing numbers. I've been tinkering for 3 weeks now and I've made the most progress by ignoring the tank for the last few days! ;D

 

[Phyl]

Bill, our Mg is UP TO 1130 as of last night. We've got pleny of dry mag to make the mix up (which is what we're using), but THANKS so much for the offer to mix some up for us. Ca is pretty well stuck at 380 (hopefully it will climb with the mag). dKH is 11.2 last night, usually rides a little lower, but my guess is that with all of the tinkering we're starting to see a slight rise. PH is nearly 8.1 (but not quite... up from 7.9'ish).

We've got lights on somewhere in the system just about 24/7 between the fuge, the stock tank, the frag tank, the main and the sump!

 

[Phyl]

Raising our Mg has brought our Ca up and increased our PH without raising our Alk. Mg isn't quite up to 1350 yet, but at 1260 our PH is now "up to" 8.06. Intersting. Thought I'd share.

 

[Carlo]

Phyl & John,

It just occurred to me why I stopped using dolomite in my reactor. Hopefully you won't have the same problem I did but it looks like you may be on the same course.

I just noticed that your alk is at 11.2dKH which is at the top of the normally exceptable range. You are going to need to watch out for is the rise in alk since you are now running dolomite in your reactor.

A quick search turned up what I was looking for:
------------
Taken from: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/oct2003/chem.htm

The problem is that for every magnesium ion released from the dolomite, 2 units of alkalinity are also released:

Consequently, if one wants to raise magnesium by 100 ppm, the alkalinity will necessarily rise by 8.2 meq/L (23 dKH).
------------

It took me a while to figure out what was going on with my alk levels and wouldn't want to see you guys go through the same hassle I did trying to figure out what the heck was causing it.

So just keep an eye on your levels and if you see the alk continue to rise you know where it's coming from!

Carlo

 

[Phyl]

Carlo, I was aware of the potential alk in crease by the use of dolomite, but I wasn't expecting to break enough down to raise my Mg by 100 points.

Our Alk levels run consistantly 10.9/11.2 with a pH (now) running at 8.05. Dolomite doesn't break down in a pH of over 6.5 and we run our reactor between 6.8 and 7 so the dolomite we have in there probably isn't even helping any.

We used a solution to up the Mg, rather than relying on the dolomite. We might be able to slow the drip rate for the Ca reactor a bit if we can keep our Mg levels higher. I just thought it was interesting that the pH seems higher than it had been previously (7.95 or so) just by getting the Mg in line. Just more of the delicate balance that I find intriguing.

Our next attempt will be to use crushed coral in chamber 2, hoping for that to help with the Mg.

Thanks

 

[Carlo]

OK Cool Phyl.

I just didn't know if you were aware of the "potential" problem or not. I know it snuck me and took me a while to figure it out.

Dolimite isn't a very commonly talked about thing around here so I just thought I'd mention it so you were aware.

I ran CC in the 2nd chamber also and found it helped bring the pH up slightly. It really helps if you slack a little and don't change out the media in the 1st chamber.

It's funny, I own 2 calcium reactors and neither is presently running as a calcium reactor. I converted both over to sulphur based nitrate reactors (sulphur and ARM) and couldn't be happier. My calcium is staying in line right where it should be (thanks to the ARM) and my nitrates are undetectable. I'm not sure I'd go back to running them as calcium reactors unless I had a very large consumption of calcium in the tank. In principle the sulphur lowers the pH in the chamber just as the CO2 does which then breaks down the ARM and releases calcium but the side benefit is also the lowering of nitrates. The big difference is that calcium additions via the Nitrate reactor are somewhat limited as you just can't "open it up" to meet what ever consumption the tank is doing.

Carlo