Lazy man's supplimentation

[hamdogg08]

I was wondering what the extent of the current supplement technology is. I was thinking about future reef bliss, and the cornucopia of products available. Is there anything out there that would monitor calcium/ph/iodine/alkalinity/magnesium etc, and automatically dose them to a specific amount then stop the dosing when needed? I've seen the aquacontroller, but is there anything that has a few more options (i don't know how many things can be monitored by probes right now, but it just seems like that would be a product that could sell quite a bit.)

[patent]

I don't think you can find probes at a reasonable cost to monitor all of those. Iodine and MG for sure not, not sure about CA. If you can find away to monitor it, then you can set up a pump with an associated controller, or an aquacontroler, aquatronica, whatever, and run it.

[David Grigor]

CA Monitors don't work very well. Don't know of any monitor for ALK that would be reasonable for the average hobbiest.

Determining your daily uptake of ALK/CA then using timing to dose that amount daily is about as automated as I know of and works quite well.

Magnesium doesn't get consumed very quickly so dosing infrequently is perfectly acceptable.

I'm not a believer in the need to dose iodine or any other trace elements.

[hamdogg08]

Are the 2 part supplements a problem if you mix them ahead of time. I was thinking about maybe getting a 2.5 gallon supplement dripper, and mixing everything that I'd be adding in the dripper. Then I could graph how much I'm dosing on the x axis, and the measurement on the y axis, and kind of have an idea on how much my tank needs.

In relation to calcium, what is the best way to get it into the tank? I've looked at calcium reactors, but they cost a lot to set up. I've heard that kalkwasser is dangerous(not sure why), and the 2 part additions are cheap initially, but seem to be an expensive long term solution.

[David Grigor]

2 part is super cheap when you using bulk ingrediants from twopartsolution.com . Going with a commercial product such as ESV or C-Balance isn't very expensive when your talking under 100g tank and not until you get a high bioload of hard corals. In your case with only a 10g, buying commercial 2 part is not going to be expensive at all. 2 parts do not get bad as long as not allowed to evaporate. You can mix up a large batch and have it last many years when properly stored. Because ALK and CA are such high concentrations, your going to what to use a dosing pump. IV dripps can be inconsistant and clog.

Kalk can be dangerous becuase of the high PH. Too much too fast can be fatal, so redudundancy needs to be in place. Also, myself and many others have found that while Kalk is a great advisary during winter time to combat CO2 levels which suppress PH, In the summertime it can be a real challenge to keep PHs from reaching too high and still get enough CA/ALK into your system. I am a firm believer in Kalkwasser and use in all my systems but espeicially in summertime do have to also have alternative supplementation.