Dosing 2 part schedule?

[MorseReef]

Hello all,

I am fairly new to reefing and have had my 60 Gal tank running for almost 7 months now.  I have recently purchased a used Apex classic and and (2) Apex DOS.  One DOS I set up to dose ALK and CAL and the other I plan to set up for automatic water changes at a later date.  

Question:

What time of day do most of you dose your ALK and CAL? 

• Right now I am Dosing my ALK between the hours of 8AM to 9PM to try and closely match my lighting schedule. Which is when I believe that the coral might be using more ALK.  This is just my hair brained theory. 

• I dose my CAL between the hours of 9:30PM to 7:30AM.  I have this schedule in theory so that I don't dose ALK and CAL at the same time. 

 

What feedback do you guys have for me on this?  What schedules do you use and why?

Thank for your advise.

Rick

 

[SuncrestReef]

When I first started, I dosed calcium during the day, then alk at night in an effort to keep pH relatively stable.  Later I learned that corals needed more alk during the day, so I switched to dosing both 24 hours per day.

Then last month I bought a Trident and learned SO MUCH about what my corals are actually doing.  Since the Trident tests alk, calcium, and magnesium multiple times per day, you can see the levels change throughout the day.  Based on that testing, I'm now dosing different amounts during the day and night, and the Trident is then fine-tuning the DOS to try to keep everything stable.

Here's my current schedule:

[SuncrestReef]

By the way, let me know if you need any tips on setting up the auto water change.  I've been running mine for over a year now and love it!

[pdxmonkeyboy]

I would advise you to not try and over think it too much and just divide the dose by 24 and dose once every hour (if that is possible)

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[MorseReef]

Do you have any trouble with precipitation dosing both CAL and ALK at the same time. 

How do you have your dosing lines run?

Do they both dump right next to each other? 

Do the both dump into the return pump chamber of your sump to get the flow they need?

[SuncrestReef]

5 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

I would advise you to not try and over think it too much and just divide the dose by 24 and dose once every hour (if that is possible)
 

But I love over thinking!

But seriously, the Neptune DOS automatically divides the dose amount and spreads it out evenly over the time period you choose.  For example, if you specified 20 ml over 24 hours, it will do 0.2 ml every 14.4 minutes.

If you tried to force it to dose every hour, you’d need to manually create 24 separate intervals, which would be a pain.  Even worse, when you decide to change the amount you’d need to edit all 24 dose intervals.

[SuncrestReef]

3 minutes ago, MorseReef said:

Do you have any trouble with precipitation dosing both CAL and ALK at the same time. 

How do you have your dosing lines run?

Do they both dump right next to each other? 

Do the both dump into the return pump chamber of your sump to get the flow they need?

I have a small powerhead in my sump skimmer chamber aimed right at my dosing tubes which are about 4” apart from each other.  This disperses it right away with no precipitation.

I chose this over the return chamber because that’s where I have my Apex probes and I don’t want the 2-part to cause my pH probe to spike.

[lewisriverfisherman]

I dose alk on the hour and cal on the half hour.  

[MorseReef]

20 hours ago, SuncrestReef said:

By the way, let me know if you need any tips on setting up the auto water change.  I've been running mine for over a year now and love it!

SuncrestReef,

How is your auto water changes set up?  Do you do daily small water changes or larger ones once a week?  I am thinking that I would do daily small water changes.  My dilema is this:  If you wanted to do a 10% water change on a 60 gallon tank once a week.  That is 6 gallons a week.  But if you did a 1 gallon water change each day for 6 days you will not actually be removing 10% of the bad water because  of the dilution factor (which I have no idea how to figure out).  Did that make sense?

[SuncrestReef]

20 minutes ago, MorseReef said:

SuncrestReef,

How is your auto water changes set up?  Do you do daily small water changes or larger ones once a week?  I am thinking that I would do daily small water changes.  My dilema is this:  If you wanted to do a 10% water change on a 60 gallon tank once a week.  That is 6 gallons a week.  But if you did a 1 gallon water change each day for 6 days you will not actually be removing 10% of the bad water because  of the dilution factor (which I have no idea how to figure out).  Did that make sense?

I run continuous water changes (24 hours per day) of 2 gallons per day on my Reefer XL 425 (112 gallons total system), so that's approximately 12% weekly.  On the Neptune forums, Zombie did the calculations that shows how little effect dilution causes:

"Blending is almost neglegable as long as the remove is upstream of the add. IMO the ease of continuous outweighs the need to use slightly more saltwater. 
Below assumes a 100 gallon tank. 

• A continuous change of 2 gallon per day that doses every minute will have 86.9% of the original water after 1 week
• A 2 gallon add then remove each day will have 86.8% of the original water after 1 week. 
• A 14 gallon change 1 day per week will have 86.0% of the original water. 

As you can see the extra amount of saltwater required for a continuous vs a daily add then remove is extremely minimal and I would gladly spend the extra 2 dollars a month on saltwater to simplify the code and just do continuous. Particularly because there is the added benefit of more consistency in water parameters."
 

 

Edited June 26, 2019 by SuncrestReef

[MorseReef]

3 minutes ago, SuncrestReef said:

I run continuous water changes (24 hours per day) of 2 gallons per day on my Reefer XL 425 (112 gallons total system), so that's approximately 12% weekly.  On the Neptune forums, Zombie did the calculations that shows how little effect dilution causes:

"Blending is almost neglegable as long as the remove is upstream of the add. IMO the ease of continuous outweighs the need to use slightly more saltwater. 
Below assumes a 100 gallon tank. 

• A continuous change of 2 gallon per day that doses every minute will have 86.9% of the original water after 1 week
• A 2 gallon add then remove each day will have 86.8% of the original water after 1 week. 
• A 14 gallon change 1 day per week will have 86.0% of the original water. 

As you can see the extra amount of saltwater required for a continuous vs a daily add then remove is extremely minimal and I would gladly spend the extra 2 dollars a month on saltwater to simplify the code and just do continuous. Particularly because there is the added benefit of more consistency in water parameters."
 

 

Thank you Sir.  I will set up for continual water changes when I am ready to set up.  I don't have my RODI and Salt tanks inside the house yet.  tomorrow we are putting in new florring in the laundry room and I hope to purchase new water tanks and set up a RODI/Salt water mixing station in there.  I will put the spare DOS I have on the wall next to the tanks and work on the programming, which looks like it should be pretty simple through the apex sense that is a task function they already have. 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/rhf/index.php#13


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[xmas_one]

I dose alk on even hours, ca on odd. 

Tastes great, Less filling.