[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by madison133

Thanks Steve. We have just been adding prime chlorine remover. Lately we have been adding coral accel to the tank because we added our first piece of soft coral (frogspawn) and fox something... I'll look into adding Ca.

are you using tap water Linda? the water here in Victoria is very soft and pure but it does have a high free algae count which seams to transfer to tanks that use tap water here. another option you have is lowering your amount to 5 gal/week and use RO water from save on foods, this would cost you about 3 bucks a week for the water. by doing this you do not need to use prime which can be expensive and recent studies are suggesting that it doesn't behave quite as we would like in salt water.

If the 3.00 a week gets to expensive you could look at a RO unit down the road (big initial cost but water for less than 0.15/gal once you have it)

your frog spawn and fox are going to consume Ca, as well once Coraline algae takes off it is a huge consumer of Ca, so you want to keep a eye on that and supplement as necessary, a few ways to do this are by using a good two part additive, adding kalk to your make up water , or eventually if the demand justifies it adding a Ca reactor. of those mentioned the Kalk addition is the cheapest as long as you are evaporation enough water to allow its addition.

when mixing your new salt water you should, like Bev said, have a heater in the bucket to raise the tamp to close to that of the tank, also have a small power head to mix it and to keep it oxygenated (if you aren't already doing so)

My schedule for water changes is an 18 gal water change once a month, but I supplement my water chemistry with a kalk reactor and a Ca reactor (once I get it fixed ) so i am doing water changes solely for the purpose of replenishing trace elements and not for maintaining primary elements. some months I forget or am gone so it gets missed with out any detrimental effect.

So if you test for Ca, Mg, and ALK on a weekly basis and those levels are staying nice on a weekly schedule try lowering the amount of the water change to 5 gal.. if they still remain steady that is good and a cheep way to maintain levels, if not look at additives (which can get expensive) or a kalk drip (if you have water evaporation you can make up with a drip)

Steve