I had not thought of that technique, preping your SW before adding to the tank. That's no different than getting the replacement water to the correct empearature and salinity before adding to the tank. That would work once I get the tank parameters to the range they should be at.

Saves you from dosing a tank...with a high load of sps you would need to dose, unless of course you did regular water changes....which i prefer anyways. some dosing will likely be required but not as much...to very little. I'm still dialing the new tank in on everythiing, but the last one needed no dosing at all...20 gallon weekly changes did it for me. From the start though i made sure all my water had levels i wanted...then it was easy to add/change as the system used more or less or what have you.

thats true marie my nutrient levels are higher than his, thats ok the rc80 will take care of that next week :mrgreen: by the way did you see way more clarity in you're water column when you switched over to the bubble king? i actually can't wait to get the rc in there!

The difference in water clarity was apparent within 24 hrs and its been getting better and better ever since. I love my BubbleKing :lol:

I think you'll find your lights are even bluer then you thought once you get all the yellow out of the water column :mrgreen:

you're not running external are you? think thats the way i'm gonna go, too nice to be in-sump :lol:....but i've always wondered usually a ''wet'' skim means light coffee colored, but what's considered skimming wet on a Bubble King? light black?:lol:

You shouldn't have ANY nitrites show up in your tank once your tank has cycled. This shows there are some other problems going on with your tank (which likely have nothing to do with your cal, alk, or mg), but I am suspicious that you would have nitrites but no nitrates. I would get an LFS to test your water for you to double check the numbers, and make sure your kits are accurate.

You can safely raise your magnesium 100 ppm per day with no troubles. The Kent Tech-M product is Magnesium sulfate, which is epsom salt, and not the best choice as a single source of magnesium. SeaChem Magnesium is a blend of Magnesium chloride and Magnesium sulfate and is a better product imo.

I'm not familiar with the SeaChem salt, when you mix up a batch of salt and let it mix for 24 hours what salinity do you mix it to? What does the cal/alk/mg test at? If they are off to begin with, then you need to buff up your waterchange water before you even use it. I use Instant Ocean salt, and I have to add a bit of calcium, and quite a bit of magnesium to get it to the proper levels before I use it.

Personally, I really dislike Kent salt. I will take Instant Ocean over Kent any day. Be sure to buff up your waterchange water before doing a waterchange as I said above. Stopping the Purple Up dosing isn't going to raise your alkalinity. ;)

my main priority is to get that skimmer in next week and let it work away, as for the magnesium i've heard better comments about the seachem magnesium as you mentioned earlier, so i think thats the one it'll be. my nitrite problem is from nothing more than running skimmerless since day 1, and i suspect my phosphates are on the higher side too, theres alot of things that i suspect water changes don't remove that a good skimmer will.

You shouldn't have nitrites from running skimmerless. I have run many tanks skimmerless and have only had troubles with nitrites when...I was have troubles... :lol: ...and that was rarely.

what skimmer are you running on you're display myka?

Myka: I think I will be picking up some Seachem salt next week after reviewing the salt analysis report posted earlier on this thread. I have halted the Purple Up just so that I can get some tank tests without it's influence for the moment.

To date I have been using Kent Tech-M to bring the Mg up. Any others have comments regarding the Kent Mg dosing vs. Seachem Mg dosing?

Thanks