[Myka]

Hi there, my guess is that your calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium would be low. FOWLR tanks also often have a low pH because of many reasons, but primarily lack of dosing and large amounts of waste production. Using a high quality reef salt can often completely replace any dosing on low demand tanks like yours. H2Ocean would be my suggestion if you take that route.

You don't state how big your tank is, or how often you do water changes, or what size water changes. If your tank isn't too big, then increased number and size of water changes would probably be of reasonable cost. The fish would also benefit from the more frequent and larger water changes. Dosing is usually cheaper than relying on water changes to keep parameters in line, but it is also much more complicated where you have to test, adjust, re-test. Of course the water change method only works if you use a high quality salt as the lower quality salts (like Instant Ocean) don't have the proper levels to begin with!

I believe ALL tanks should be tested for nitrate on a regular monthly basis at the least as low nitrate levels are really quite necessary for optimal health of all marine inhabitants. If you are going to supplement then you will need calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium test kits as well as supplements for each.

I would suggest you take a sample of your water to your LFS and get them to test ammonia, nitrate, calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium. See what the numbers are and go from there. For poops and giggles you can get them to test pH if they have a digital pH meter. pH test kits are so horribly inaccurate they don't even count imo.

The numbers you're aiming for in a FOWLR would be:

Calcium 380-440 ppm
Alkalinity 7-10 dKH
Mg 1350-1450 ppm

You can also take a read through the link in my signature regarding calcium, alkalinity, Mg, pH, but keep in mind that the suggestions are related to reef tanks in mind.