[adviner]

OK, I have had my reef up for several months now. I just have LS, LR, 2 anemnies and a clown fish, and set of cleaning crew in my main tank and my fuge. I do a partial everyother week of 5 gallons(since my tank 55 gal tank doesnt have allot of fish in it). I do add calcium weekly using Turbo calc.. My LF has lots of purple algae and I see lots of small tube fan everywhere growing. My water levels from my test kit is always good.

My question is before i move forward is what and when do you start using other chemicals? Is their a guide, their is so many chemicals out their I dont know where to go from here. Example:
Iron, Magnesium, Strontium, Iodine and this is before the coral chemicals. Should I be adding the chemicals above already? My reef test kit doesnt check for any of those.

Help, thanks

[Hosser]

First of all DONT dose anything you arent testing for. Researching your needs will be alot better than any sort of generalized guide. My guess would be you dont even need to dose calcium, doesnt sound like you have anything that needs it. With you water changes those levels of needed things will stay pretty good until your tank is loaded down.

[adviner]

I actually do test my tank and that is the reason why I dose it with calcium. I'm trying to keep it at 430 and was finding that a week after my water change it was at about 380.

[Hosser]

Okay good. Then you know the drill. Test and add if needed. Just curious what salt you use?

[adviner]

I use red sea salt that my local fish store carries. For the question on the other chemicals, how would I know then when to add or not? When I read the back of the bottles it all sounds important to add.

[Hosser]

Wow you use the same salt as I do and Calcium is always high with me. Anywho, you will just need to test for it. If it is in the low levels you will have to add and test the next day to kinda of keep track. Alot of stuff sounds important. Keep it simple. I dont dose a single thing in my display except for a partial dose of trace elements, ad phyto. Nothing in my tank is doing bad. Im sure several of the members on here could help alot more if we had a list of what you have.

[Ganrin]

Test for calcium, alkalinity and magnesium. With the load you currently have, and the water changes you are doing, most of the trace minerals will be in ok concentrations. (This can and will change as you add more stock.)

Here is an article on the relationship between ca, alk, mg and ph, its a bit of a read, but the basics are that if mg is too low corals cant use the ca that is present in the water, and if alk is too low the water cant hold ca, so you need to maintain those levels so that corals can use the ca available.
A Simplified Guide to the Relationship Between Calcium, Alkalinity, Magnesium and pH by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com


Edit-- lots of good reading here--> http://www.reefbuilders.com/forums/n...b-library.html

[michael]

dont add anything yet, theres no need as the tanks still young, personally im suprised you have 2 anemonies in there, bad move imo, the tank need to be mature and at least a year old with stable parameters, i think you should have waited before adding stock, 3 months is very young in this hobby, still you have them now so i would concentrate on phos and nitrate, make sure you do some reading on the anemonies you have and ensure the lighting you have is right for them, good luck hope they make it