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Old 09-26-2018, 04:37 PM
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Delphinus Delphinus is offline
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Thanks, so that's two votes for the ReefCrest stuff which I was already thinking was probably the way to go here.

Quote:
How much do you need? You really shouldn't be requiring that much Magnesium unless you have a monstrous tank.
I wouldn't call it a monstrous tank but it is around 300 gallons so I guess not exactly nano either. The only salts I've tried that have had adequate Mg levels had cost uplifts that were more than just buying the Magnesium so I've always just adjusted my water change water, and between that and the mag chips in the reactor, it's usually enough. But having said that, I am always astonished at how much Mg product it takes to raise testable Mg levels by a measurable amount. For example, it takes about 1ml of Mg sulfate (paired with the corresponding amount of MgCl in the 5:3 ratio for MgCl:MgSO4) to raise testable Mg by 1. So say if I need a bump of 100 in Mg in the tank, I need 100 ml MgSO4 and about 170ml MgCl (so about 270ml overall product, or just a shade over 1 cup mixed at 5:3). Correspondingly for a 50g water change, for the incoming water I dose about 5 times 1/4 cup and 3 time 1/4 cup of each to raise that by about 400 or so (I want my incoming water to be about 1500 which may seem high but then I'm sort of dosing the Mg into the tank via water changes. It all sort of evens out in the end). Don't ask me the how's or why's, but for some reason the anemones in the tank (two carpets, and a bunch of RBTAs) are a good visual indicator of Mg - if they don't look "absolutely stunning" then I know Mg has dropped and usually through testing can confirm that the Mg is dropped. Whether that means the anemones themselves are actively consuming Mg in some manner, I can't say; but I am firmly convinced that they do care about Mg in the tank.

TL;DR - yes I do seem to go through a lot of Magnesium.
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