additives and testing THE BASICS

[reefer4411]

i am over whelmed with all the different info on so many addatives of every sort i look into in to one and it tells me i should also use others i look in to the others and they tell me to use even more on top of this i am told simple tests may lead me to belive i need to alter some thing when in reality the test is actualy to general and every thing is just fine

my true question is what are the basics

in addition to this what are the basics as far as testing

i know this hobby may be costly but it appears it is very easy to get carried away

i know this may sound broad but i also cant seem to find a store in my area where i trust there advice they just want to sell me stuff futher more many lables of additives and supplements seem to have advice that is laden with sales pitches also

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

To start, I think that you can worry mostly about calcium, alkalinity and pH.

Only supplement calcium and alkalinity to begin with. There are a variety of ways. The easiest are the two part additives, but they get costly. Limewater is also a good bet, and is what I use.

You might want to monitor ammonia through the initial cycling.

This article describes what things you need to think about for reef aquaria:

Reef Aquarium Water Parameters (a summary general article)
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.htm