[Pomme]

What additives do you use in your sps tank?

Hi i am just wondering what you guys out there, who have got sps tanks, what additives you use in your tanks. From ammount of water changes, kalk, ca reactor, coral foods, etc.......

Andrew

[jdfenn]

Andrew

I have been growing sps corals for about 4 months now. IMO I have had a great deal of luck. My sps have almost trippled in size form 1 inch frags. Anyway I do a water change of five percent evey week. I use IO salt then I airate the water for about 12 hours before I put it in. I also put in 1tsp of seachem reef builder every week. I dose strontium and iodine every other day and I used kalkwasser for all my water topoff with a kalk reactor. I also use reef plus and reef advantage on a weekly or biweekly basis. I feed phytoplankton and rotifers every day. I also run carbon in my sump.

If that is not enough to intimidate you nothing is. I adopted this system from a guy named marko that I saw his tank on reefcentral.com. It is in the tank of the month section under haaga

hope this helps

jeff

Originally Posted by Pomme

What additives do you use in your sps tank?

Hi i am just wondering what you guys out there, who have got sps tanks, what additives you use in your tanks. From ammount of water changes, kalk, ca reactor, coral foods, etc.......

Andrew

[Pomme]

yeah very informative, its just i hear some people do nothin except water changes and kalk and other throw the lot at them so im not sure what to do?

[jdfenn]

heres the thing. I never used to dose anything until my sps were sort of looking like the tissue was getting loose or someting. So I turned to teh web and found evidence that people who did not dose strontium and iodine were having problems with this and after they started dosing it stopped. that is enough for me.

jeff

Originally Posted by Pomme

yeah very informative, its just i hear some people do nothin except water changes and kalk and other throw the lot at them so im not sure what to do?

[Pomme]

yeah i think i will dose it then!

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Pomme

yeah i think i will dose it then!

Andrew,

Before you begin dosing this two "supplements", read this thread:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...hreadid=278296

FWIW, word suppliment means that you should supplement if there is deficiensy of strontium and iodine in your water.Did you test to find that you indeed need to add it? There is alot of debate going on on this issues and I would strongly advice to do some more research before you start dosing.I have not dosed any of the two that you mentioned and never will,simply becouse I can not accurately test for it and say that water in my tank is depleated of Iodine and Strontium.
I believe in providing water parameters as close as possibile to NSW parameters.
Calcium and Alkalinity and proper salinity, no detectable NO2,NO3.
I do water changes and have calcium reactor,DSB in my tank and use home made foods to feed the tank.I do use store bought foods like golden pearls and cyclop-ezee and some frozen mysid and brine.
My "SPS" corals doing fine and growing well.

[Pomme]

i think i will go and get the two test kits for dtrontium and iodine and see how it looks?

[Dive_Master]

I never tried the strontium test, but I tried most of the Iodine tests and think they are worthless. I was unble to mesure repeatably and accurately concentration of Iodine.

I just add some TECH Iodine once every week, becuse my skimmer is huge and takes most of it out. The animals are doing fine, I am not changig my routine.

My suggestion is try what works with your tank and keep with it, forget most of the tests.

I test for calcium, alkalinity and PH. Nothing else. I know that nitrates are insignificant.

good luck

[golfish]

I don't use additives at all. A Ca reactor is almost a must for sps tanks over 50 gals so you should get all the additives you need from the reactor media.

I have tried all the stuff like Golden perals and DT's but didn't notice a change. I feed the fish and let them feed the corals.

I don't have a tank at the moment (new house) but here's a shot of my old tank taken about 10 months ago

[SueT]

I really agree with Gene on this subject. I will not add or supplement anything to my sps tank unless I can test for it to see if it is even necessary. I recently added a calcium reactor and that adds all I need with the exception of magnesium. I have a mag. test kit by Salifert and also the calcium and alkalinity kits and that is all I test for. I add the magnesium only if needed after testing.

[Ninong]

Andrew,

I add Kalkwasser. I would add iodine if my concentration ever fell below the range measured in natural seawater but it hasn't and it is not likely that it ever will. The concentration range in NSW is from a low of 0.025 ppm to a high of 0.063 ppm, with an average value of 0.0507 ppm. I have been measuring 0.20 ppm total iodine (actually that's all iodide because I can't get a reading on iodate with Salifert's test kit due to interferences).

The total iodine concentrations in the 23 tankwater samples in Dr. Ron Shimek's study all were much higher than NSW levels. The range was from a low of double NSW to 40 times NSW with a mean of 9 times NSW. No tank had less than double NSW levels of iodine. The tanks with the really high iodine levels were the ones being dosed with iodine supplements. Just remember that iodine is quite toxic at elevated levels.

I see no reason to dose strontium even though it is present at levels less than NSW levels. I can find no reference in the literature that strontium is actually required or plays an active role in calcium carbonate precipitation. Just because it is present in coral skeletons does not mean that it is required. I have seen it recommended by certain hobby authors in their books but none has explained exactly what it does or why it should be added. I might add magnesium if my levels fell far below NSW levels because that would affect my ability to maintain calcium and carbonate at appropriate levels. Right now my magnesium is about 90% of NSW levels and I probably wouldn't bother adding it unless it fell to less than 80% of NSW levels.

I don't have a calcium reactor so I do test for these things just to feel good. People running a calcium reactor can get by without all of these tests. I wouldn't add anything to my tank unless I had tested for it first, especially something like iodine.

[apophis924]

I just use Kalk, magnesium and iodide. and kent Koral vite. I used half the recomended dose and i keep Magnesium around 1400. I use to dose str, But my sps would shrink into their skeleton each time i added it. Besides food for the fish i add nothing else. I dont run a skimmer or a sump. So i know my corals get plenty plankton to eat I do 15% weekly water changes run carbon and phosban 24/7. No problems thus far.