Additives for 800+ Gallons

[o2manyfish]

Hey Gang,

This question is for those running SPS dominant tank in excess of 750 to 800g.

What additives are you putting in and in what quantities?

It can be cost prohibitive to add Strontium, Magnesium, Lugol's, DT's etc in the doses recommended.

Since most with large tanks have large sumps/refugiums. I was wondering if you base your dosing on total system volume, or volume of SPS.

Thanks,

Dave B

[Aged Salt]

Dave, just been adding Salifert's Bio-coral for about 3mos--can't really tell any differences in the Sps"s but the anemones seem "better"ie. more inflated. Otherwise, just feed the fish 3X/d:)

[dgasmd]

If it is not coming out of the Ca reactor, from the Kalk reactor, or the fish food it is not going in!

[willis]

Mind if I just hang around and drool on this thread? It is a great question tho, and it's something I didn't really think about when I planned my 300.

[oliver]

I am running about 600g in my system which is heavily stocked with SPS (75 acros plus 25 other SPS) and LPS (lots of favids, scolymias) and a few large clams (16" gigas and 12" squamosa). As I have been adding SPS, I have noticed a massive increase in demand for CaCO3. I have a Koralin 4002 Ca reactor and was pumping about 18l/day of Kalk through a Nilsen reactor daily. I assumed that my Ca and CO3 levels were high. A couple of months ago, I noticed that my acros and clams were really slowing down in growth and I actually tested the water. I found the Ca to be in the low 200's and the Alk to be about 6. I tried boosting production on the Ca reactor but have not had much luck. I then decided to add two extra pump units to my Spectrapure Litermeter. I am now pumping about 14L/day of Kalk and 2L each of a saturated solution of Kent Superbuffer and Kent Turbo Calcium which are pre-mixed and stored in 20g tanks in my fish room. I also noticed that my Mg was in the range of 800 ppm (suppose to be 1300) It took about 3 gallons of Kent Tech M to get my level up to 1250. I buy the 5g containers of Kent Superbuffer, Kent Turbo Calcium and Kent Tech M from whoever will get me the best price, but the large containers are substantially cheaper than the small ones. I would also highly recommend the use of the Litermeter system as it saves me from mixing and dumping large amounts of solution every day. Even though the Litermeter looks a little flimsy and seems to be a bit overpriced, I think that it is an excellent investment. I have an old one that has been running problem free on my smaller tank for over three years, without undergoing any significant maintenance.

[dgasmd]

Oliver:

I ahve a suggestion for you that may improve things altogether in the long run and cost you much less too. Even when money is not a limiting factor nobody wants to waste it unnecessarily. Pplus, you can use it for corals instead.

You should invest in a custom large single chamber/reverse flow reactor or go with a large fluidized bed reactor like the Deltec. I am not posting to get into arguments with anyone about which is best and why, but I can tell you from personal experience only that these are the only way to go when it comes to a large and very well saturated tank.

You have large demands that can be met by smaller units regardless of what they claim. Trust me on this one. I had a dual chamber reactor that was fairly big. I had the bubble rate so high to keep up with the effluent rate that the CO2 was not even completely dissolving and so had some gas formation and waste happening at the top. I went with a custom GEO unit that is 8" in diameter and 36" tall recirculated from bottom to top by a pressure rated little giant 2MD pump. My effleunt rate is the same as before and the pH coming out is the same too. My bubble rate is less than 1/3 as before and have more than plenty of room to supply 5 tanks like mine. And I just use crush coral for media.:rolleye1:

If I was in your shoes, I would seriously look into a similar unit or the largest Deltec. I think the model is the 1000 or so. Not sure. A friend has it and he said when he measured the DKH out of it it was in the 80's. Now, that is unreal:D :D

[Aged Salt]

Oliver, I agree with Alberto. In my case, I run 2-MRC-dual-CR6's. I don't need to run either one "wide-open" so I don't melt down the aragonite as quickly[less changes of ARM] + I have replication if one CR becomes disabled,Bob:)

[dgasmd]

You have large demands that can be met by smaller units regardless of what they claim. Trust me on this one.

Sorry, but that was supposed to say CANNOT BE MET

MRC-dual-CR6's

Actually, that is the unit I was running before.

Alberto