Raising Mg

[MikeP]

Originally Posted by Frenchie

Thanks Ill try the mag cystals from Little Silver Max. hopefully that will help.

Thanks for the advise,

Rene

I've been using Mag from LSM for about a year and it works great. I figured out how much my Mag, Cal, and Alk go down per day and dose accordingly. In my case I had to overdose quite a bit to get levels up. Now maintaining with daily dosing is easy.

HTH

[Frenchie]

Is it odd for it to be so low? I had been using instant ocean salt, but have recently switched to reef crystals. The tank is only 6 months old.

[atcguy]

i tried everything to get my levels up at one time.. I find liquid additives dont work well.. Then I tried the reefchem mag flakes.. wow.. brought it up very well over a couple days.. I use this now in my new IO salt for water changes..

[fkshiu]

Originally Posted by atcguy

i tried everything to get my levels up at one time.. I find liquid additives dont work well.. Then I tried the reefchem mag flakes.. wow.. brought it up very well over a couple days.. I use this now in my new IO salt for water changes..

Liquid additives are diluted. Dry chemicals - especially anhydrous ones - are nothing but the good stuff. jdieck's calculator that TomR mentioned is very useful also in comparing across brands/methods/mixtures of how much you need to bring your levels up.

[Rbacchiega]

I'd also try raising your calcium as well. I like to keep mine up around 430....

[Frenchie]

Ive been trying to raise the calcium as well, but I suspect the low mg was keeping it down. I will have to try the dry additive, but the calculator says I need like 600 table spoons? Does this sound right?

[xtreme]

Originally Posted by Frenchie

Ive been trying to raise the calcium as well, but I suspect the low mg was keeping it down. I will have to try the dry additive, but the calculator says I need like 600 table spoons? Does this sound right?

Ya, Thats probably right. I needed to dose about 3000ml of the DIY mix to bring my Mg up to where I wanted it, and I only have a 125 gal.

[tlo]

You do need a lot to raise it, dont raise it too quickly, as it can stress your corals. Just remember it is a salt and raising it a lot will also raise your sg. I found if you need to raise your mag by a signigicant amount it is better to add it either with a water change or at the same sg as you currently keep your system at.

[Tom R]

Yes it blows your mind how much additive is required to bring them into the correct levels. That is why these premixed additives available at you LFS do not seem to do anything. I use 22 table spoons of mg added to my mix for a 45G water change using IO salt. This will bring the mg levels to 1400. Once I got my mg to 1350 in the tank I only have to ensure that my water change water maintains those levels. I seldom have to dose mg between water changes. I do the same for ca.

Tom R

Originally Posted by Frenchie

Ive been trying to raise the calcium as well, but I suspect the low mg was keeping it down. I will have to try the dry additive, but the calculator says I need like 600 table spoons? Does this sound right?

[TTT]

Originally Posted by atcguy

i tried everything to get my levels up at one time.. I find liquid additives dont work well.. Then I tried the reefchem mag flakes.. wow.. brought it up very well over a couple days.. I use this now in my new IO salt for water changes..

Where are you buying your Mag flakes and what is the cost for quantity?