calcium question

[fresh]

Hi all,

I have a 77 gal with softies and LPS. The lps being: hammer, candy-cane, and frog-spawn.

Do I really have to worry about calcium if I plan on doing arount 20% water change every 4 weeks?

Also do I have to worry about supplementing with anything else?

I have owned a 10gal nano for 2 years, and that one went very nicely but the reason is I did a water change every week, and I really don't want to do that with my 77 gal!!!

thanks

fresh.

[Aquattro]

LPS do use calcium from the water, as does any coraline algae you have. You will likely need to add Ca, but only a test kit can confirm that.

[Chad]

I have to supplement my little 20gal and that is with weekly water changes.. so I would think in the end you'd probably have to add some kalk or get a calcium reactor going on.
Especialy once you start stocking up..

[robbyville]

Hi Fresh,

I never had a Calcium problem when I had only a few LPS and softies, but as mentioned your best guage is a test kit. That's with bi-monthly water changes of between 5-10% each.

I now have a small variety of SPS and LPS (mostly in the form of SPS frags and 1 clam). I find that I supplement liquid calcium a couple of times each week and keep it at around 440-460 (60 gal tank). I do not run a Ca reactor, nor do I really believe that they are necessary for a softy tank, although I cannot wait until I have the budget for one now that I am adding more SPS :biggrin:

Good luck,

Rob

[Chad]

Ultimately your need to buffer your calcium or Alk will come from testing your water chemistry and determining your consumption.. and adjusting for it.

[sumpfinfishe]

Fresh,
I use to have mostly LPS corals in my tank and Ca depletion didn't seem to be a problem until those corals became very large(over ten crowns per colony), then I started adding Kalk in the second week of the month to keep up with the loss. About a year ago I started to add SPS and now I would say that these corals make up 35% of my tank. Once I added a few SPS then things really started to change, now I'm lucky if I can keep my Ca at 380-390ppm.

Like Brad said above, the only true way to know is by testing. When I had just LPS I would test every second week of the month, now I test every single week :biggrin:

[Chad]

The funny thing is, in my tank I have about 80% softies, zoo's, mushrooms and some ricordia.. the rest is a few SPS and LPS.. yet I cannot keep up with the demand of calcium and Alk... Strange trends..

[StirCrazy]

just for a FYI soffties use Ca also, just not as much.

Steve

[Jack]

The funny thing is, in my tank I have about 80% softies, zoo's, mushrooms and some ricordia.. the rest is a few SPS and LPS.. yet I cannot keep up with the demand of calcium and Alk... Strange trends..

I think it has to do with ammount of water volume too.

[Beverly]

I have owned a 10gal nano for 2 years, and that one went very nicely but the reason is I did a water change every week, and I really don't want to do that with my 77 gal!!!

fresh,

I do weekly 15% water changes and other maintenance on a 28g, a 42g and a 72g, then test for Ca and alk and adust these levels in all three tanks. I go through a lot of RO/DI water and my back hurts after the water changes, but it's worth it in the long run.

28g has nitrate of 5 ppm, and the 42g's and 72g's nitrates are ~10 ppm, and that's with no sumps/refugiums and no skimmers. Use only mechanical filtration that's cleaned weekly.

[titus]

Hello,

Beverly, I'm sure your inhabitants love you for the fresh water instead of recycled water off from a skimmer. That is a lot of work though.

Titus

[Beverly]

Titus,

Did I mention my aching back :eek: :mrgreen:

Over the past few weeks, I've been noticing how much valonia is my my 42g, so I tore it down yesterday, got out my Xacto knife and scraped it all off :evil: Scraped a bit of rock off while doing it to make sure I got to the root of the problem, if you know what I mean. Rinsed each rock off in two separate rinses to help remove any spores I released. Have gone through 20g (and counting) of NSW and one laundry load of towels (and counting) to do the job right.

Am now in the process of putting the tank back together, but the water is cloudy for the moment, so it's pretty hard to see what the heck I'm doing in there :confused: Corals are in a rubbermaid tub with heater, powerhead and an NO strip light. Rock not in the tank is in buckets of sw. Will post pics of the tank in a few days once the tank is back together.

Better go soak my sore back in the bathtub until the tank clears :rolleyes:

[Bob I]

Beverly I find it interesting and heartening that you are one of the very small skimmerless, and sumpless crowd.
In my case I have a 50 and a 20H tank. These tanks have always been skimmerless, and sumpless. The only difference in my case is that I run Chemipure in smaller Fluvals. I am assuming it does a good job, as I don't bother measuring things, and I do very few water changes. Between the two tanks there are seven smallish fish and a couple of Cleaner shrimp. I also have some soft and LPS corals, and zoanthids that grow like mad.
The 20H also has some M. digitata, a bit of Hynnophora, and a piece of staghorn. All the inhabitants appear to be happy, so I will continue being less anal than most.
I am 63 years old and could well be considered somewhat stubborn. :mrgreen:

[Chad]

I was skimmerless on my 20gal for a good 8months.. but I finaly opted to put my crummy Sea Clone on there because I was having some cyno problems. However, I have come to realize its more than likely related to my sandbed (crushed coral) .. I am in the process of switching over to sugar sand..

[TANGOMAN]

Hey Bob, ya' forgot about me...I 've got a few tanks with no sumps and no skimmers. There a pain in the ...compared to my tanks with sumps that house skimmers...much "tidyer" if your dosing kalk to maintain calcium levels too.
You stubborn ? Get outa' here... :lol:

[Beverly]

boB,

The thought of a sump scares the cr*p outta me with all those stories of animals finding their way into the plumbing and other plumbing failures producing floods :eek: A few years back we had a HOT Precision Marine skimmer on our 75g that was more trouble than it was worth. The thing overflowed several times, but it did skim well :confused:

I'm even afraid of Fluvals and the like because of overflow problems, so now everything is in the tank and no water is lost due to malfunctioning equipment.

I find it more important to clean the foam media in the Hagen 802s than doing a water change, but I like the hands-on aspect of doing weekly maintenance and water changes. Makes me feel like I'm an integral part of that strange world inside the tanks for some strange reason.

I only started measuring alk and Ca when I noticed in our almost 1 year old 42g that I wasn't getting very good coraline growth. Wasn't dripping kalk like I used to so I had to resort to measuring and adjusting stuff. Both alk and Ca were low in all tanks, even the 28g seahorse tank which has no corals, only LR, sandbed and macroalgae.

Yes, it's heartening to me too to know there are others who aren't high tech with their reefs and still manage to have nice looking tanks. How about some pics of yours, boB?

[Bob I]

boB,

I'm even afraid of Fluvals and the like because of overflow problems, so How about some pics of yours, boB?

There are some pics on my website. I will put an updated picture of the 20H on tomorrow. When I get Evan's custom built 11G nano later this week I will have to put pictures of it up also. :mrgreen: