110g Mixed Reef V2

[Delphinus]

Every day?

Sorry the reason I ask is I'm sort of going through the same motions of trying to get a handle of the rate of consumption of Mg in my tanks. Either Mg is a lot lower than what I think it is going in, or the rate of consumption is a LOT higher than what I thought it was. I went through an entire bottle of TA Mg in one week and only raised Mg about 100ish which when you're starting at 900 and want to end up at 1300-1400 is not quite enough. I ordered new Mg from Chemmaster on the board and am now dosing that directly. Previously I had only used his Mg on water change water but I had run out so I had to buy some more, it came last week so as of now I'm seeing how much of that I can add to the tanks to see how much will raise Mg by how much and all that.

[michika]

Mmmm blond tang!

So you were home for all that time and you don't have any photos to share? Ahem...Doug, you owe us photos...

I can't be bothered to fiddle around with my Mg. levels. I just have some of that Fauna Marin mag stuff for Ca. reactors. Its kind of like plug and play, but its less bothersom. I'm always around 1250-1350 depending on what is going on in the tank. I do give the two of you kuddos for trying to figure it out.

How are you determining if its because you have low Mg. levels to begin with, or because of consumption?

[Delphinus]

I have some mag chips that could be run in a reactor but I guess for it to be useful I probably ought to run a reactor. I just figure it's not worth dialing in a reactor on a tank that should be shutdown any day now. Yes, yes I know I'm slow on a tank build. It's been mentioned once or twice. People may think I don't notice but I notice.

But even still, I'm now starting to wonder if consumption can be significant. I always took the viewpoint that if my water change water was OK then my tank would be OK because I figured consumption was nowhere near that of Ca and Alk. But maybe not.

I guess the short answer is (if you were asking me that is, and sorry Doug for the hijack) I hope to find that out by testing my water change water. If it's high or normal then I know it is an issue of consumption that needs to be addressed with dosing (or a reactor that outputs Mg). Although I suspect a reactor with mag chips only "sort of" deals with replenishing Mg, I'm not sure you can really tune a reactor 2 ways - ie., one vectror to maintain Ca/Alk and another vector to maintain Mg - I would assume all 3 would be output proportional to one another so if Mg depletion isn't directly proportional to Ca and Alk depletion then it stands to reason you'd still have to occasionally do some correctional Mg dosing, or adjustments via water changes (ie., add Mg to makeup water to help elevate after a waterchange or whatever).

I will say that I'm surprised how much Mg it takes to raise the levels. Makes me wonder if there is indeed Mg consumption going on .. but I dunno ??