Tell me about magnesium!

[Delphinus]

I think our understanding has progressed in those years Brad. I started looking at Mg a long time ago, 5 or 6 years easily so it feels a little old hat to me now but it was an eye opener when I did start looking into things.

Now .. I can't honestly say I've noticed a difference with corals and Mg levels. The things I have noticed about Mg however:

1) Easier to maintain balanced Ca/Alk levels when Mg is right. When Mg is too low, it feels like I'm adding way more calcium to get it to raise. Also, a lot less precipitates out on powerhead impellers and so on. My salt mixing rubbermaid always had a 2mm thick layer of calcium encrustation over the whole surface and that stopped once I started mixing Mg into my makeup water before adding salt.

2) A.R.M. reactor media outputs a reasonable level of Mg so if you're using A.R.M. I would suggest that's why your Mg level in the tank is a solid "not bad" without even trying. You can also add Mg crystals from KZ to your media if you wish it to output a higher Mg but I always did find that Mg in my tank was never bad when I ran a reactor, it was things like my makeup salt had it too low and water changes were throwing the levels off.

3) I do notice when my Mg is low in the tank because the anemones don't seem to open as much. No idea why they care about Mg (ie. the biology behind this) but they do. I've seen it enough times to have a slight empirical basis to the observation. So having Mg at proper levels really doesn't hurt.

and

4) Although 47 tonnes in a year might be a slight exagerration nevertheless it is absolutely shocking how much Mg media it takes to raise Mg in a tank. A lot. I found with liquid additives I'd have to use up an entire $30 bottle to raise 24g of water change water to bring it from say 1100 (or whatever the starting point, depends on the salt I'd be using) to 1400 which is where I like my water change water to be. $30 per w/c is not sustainable so I switched to bulk and man I am going to miss LittleSilverMax/ChemMaster VERY much in this regard because buying from him was several orders of magnitude cheaper than bulkreefsupply.com. I just ordered some from BRS and the shipping was killer: I won't be buying bulk chems from them again. Off to Univar for me from now on.

5) I find that Mg depletion does occur in a system that also uses up Ca and Alk but it's a fraction of the depletion rates of Ca and Alk. So it's not really necessary to dose the tank unless you really want to - it's easy enough to maintain proper levels using water changes and tracking the Mg going in via w/c.

[dunl]

Gentlemen, please check out this thread:

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=72209

It's not pure calcium hydroxide....the other main element/ ingredient is magnesium.

Two birds, one stone.

[The Grizz]

Originally Posted by dunl

Gentlemen, please check out this thread:

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=72209

It's not pure calcium hydroxide....the other main element/ ingredient is magnesium.

Two birds, one stone.

This is interesting, I will have to check it out before I run out of Mag flake.

[dunl]

Originally Posted by The Grizz

This is interesting, I will have to check it out before I run out of Mag flake.

It's in the trunk of the Jetta right now, but I'll post either a pic or a list of the ingredients tomorrow for everyone. You're more than welcome to grab some of this if you want to try it out, Greg.

[The Grizz]

Originally Posted by dunl

It's in the trunk of the Jetta right now, but I'll post either a pic or a list of the ingredients tomorrow for everyone. You're more than welcome to grab some of this if you want to try it out, Greg.

Still have 20lbs of Mag flake from ChemMasters at the moment but defiantly would like to know what you picked up.

Tony, when Littlesilvermax was closing out he told me that he did sell all is knowledge and recipes to someone on CanReef so maybe they will pick up where he left off. HINT HINT if you are that person & are reading this

[Aquattro]

Tony, that explains a lot, thanks. I suppose with my tank still in it's infancy, things might change as the corals take up more Ca/alk, but I've never measured and needed to add. I'll watch it now that I have a test kit, and perhaps I'll need to add some media, as I'm guessing having a large reactor has so far spared me from this stuff.
And ok, 47 tonnes might have been a bit of an exageration

So you aim for higher than 1350ish?? Like what, 1500ppm?

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

So you aim for higher than 1350ish?? Like what, 1500ppm?

I aim for 1450ish. Happy with any reading from 1400 to 1500.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by The Grizz

Tony, when Littlesilvermax was closing out he told me that he did sell all is knowledge and recipes to someone on CanReef so maybe they will pick up where he left off. HINT HINT if you are that person & are reading this

One can only hope. I have to admit that after the minimal amount I just ordered from BRS and the price doubling to get it shipped (AND it hasn't arrived yet almost two weeks later) that the thought occurred to me that if the void isn't filled soon that I'll just go ahead and fill the void. I'm hardly a master of anything so I'll just call my little enterprise ChemClutz.

So if that person is indeed reading this ... get on with it!!

[The Grizz]

Thanks Tony this is what I was trying to remember, I think you told me this as well at one point

Originally Posted by Delphinus

I think our understanding has progressed in those years Brad. I started looking at Mg a long time ago, 5 or 6 years easily so it feels a little old hat to me now but it was an eye opener when I did start looking into things.

Now .. I can't honestly say I've noticed a difference with corals and Mg levels. The things I have noticed about Mg however:

1) Easier to maintain balanced Ca/Alk levels when Mg is right. When Mg is too low, it feels like I'm adding way more calcium to get it to raise. Also, a lot less precipitates out on powerhead impellers and so on. My salt mixing rubbermaid always had a 2mm thick layer of calcium encrustation over the whole surface and that stopped once I started mixing Mg into my makeup water before adding salt.

2) A.R.M. reactor media outputs a reasonable level of Mg so if you're using A.R.M. I would suggest that's why your Mg level in the tank is a solid "not bad" without even trying. You can also add Mg crystals from KZ to your media if you wish it to output a higher Mg but I always did find that Mg in my tank was never bad when I ran a reactor, it was things like my makeup salt had it too low and water changes were throwing the levels off.

3) I do notice when my Mg is low in the tank because the anemones don't seem to open as much. No idea why they care about Mg (ie. the biology behind this) but they do. I've seen it enough times to have a slight empirical basis to the observation. So having Mg at proper levels really doesn't hurt.

and

4) Although 47 tonnes in a year might be a slight exagerration nevertheless it is absolutely shocking how much Mg media it takes to raise Mg in a tank. A lot. I found with liquid additives I'd have to use up an entire $30 bottle to raise 24g of water change water to bring it from say 1100 (or whatever the starting point, depends on the salt I'd be using) to 1400 which is where I like my water change water to be. $30 per w/c is not sustainable so I switched to bulk and man I am going to miss LittleSilverMax/ChemMaster VERY much in this regard because buying from him was several orders of magnitude cheaper than bulkreefsupply.com. I just ordered some from BRS and the shipping was killer: I won't be buying bulk chems from them again. Off to Univar for me from now on.

5) I find that Mg depletion does occur in a system that also uses up Ca and Alk but it's a fraction of the depletion rates of Ca and Alk. So it's not really necessary to dose the tank unless you really want to - it's easy enough to maintain proper levels using water changes and tracking the Mg going in via w/c.