You pick the change poll

[Delphinus]

As far as the relationship from Mg to Ca and Alk .. yeah, there's a bunch of fancy articles you can read but my main take away from all that is "it takes more Ca and Alk dosing to maintain more gooder levels of Ca and Alk when Mg is low."

So raising your Mg a wee bit (because I don't think I'd worry too much about 1150, although if it were my tank I'd bump up the Mg on the next water change) I'd expect that you might need to bump down your Alk and/or Ca dosing by a wee bit. That said, you might not need to because who knows maybe the uptake will increase thus keeping everything stable, except maybe stuff grows a tiny bit faster. (A bit of a stretch but who knows..)

[Delphinus]

Also from back when I did run a reactor for Ca and Alk, I found that Mg just worked out to where it needed to be.

I've been kind of thinking actually of putting a Ca reactor back online on my tank. When I look back I always had way better SPS growth on tanks with them than without them. I just don't cherish the thought of needing to refill CO2 tanks every few months (which for me was sort of the ultimate push away from a reactor in the first place). I wonder though, if one could just just keep the Ca and Alk dosing and have a small reactor as a kind of supplementary measure and then it's not as big a deal to take the reactor offline for a week to get a tank refilled or whatever.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Also from back when I did run a reactor for Ca and Alk, I found that Mg just worked out to where it needed to be.

I think that this may be the case and I'll just leave well enough alone.

Why were you filling your CO2 so often? I have a 20lb tank and I fill it every 10 months or so. Unless I muck up the gasket, in which case I fill it twice in two days

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Why were you filling your CO2 so often? I have a 20lb tank and I fill it every 10 months or so. Unless I muck up the gasket, in which case I fill it twice in two days

Actually that's about par, it was just an inconvenience to take time off work to go to a place that could refill it (because any such place will only be open when I'm supposed to be at work myself, with the only exception that they open later than when I start, and close earlier than when I finish .... what is UP with that anyhow!!!) and then to have to do it twice (once to drop off, once to pickup).

A tank exchange program would be better.

Ok in the end it wasn't the only reason, I always had issues with the designs of the ones I was using, I also had issues maintaining steady slow flow through those things (would be easier nowadays with peristaltic pumps and controllers so a bit of a moot point perhaps) and plus there was the whole "I want to reduce my CO2 footprint because I *care* blah blah blah".

Like I said I am sort of considering going to back to a reactor. As soon as a few other projects are off the to-do list I was thinking of building myself a new one. Been far too long since I did any acrylic fabrication for this hobby. Might be time to revisit that.

[Delphinus]

Oh I totally forgot that the other reason was I wanted to devote my CO2 resources towards my planted FW tank. Although I kind of haven't refilled the tank yet from when it last went empty about 12 months ago.

[sphelps]

Tony if you buy a tank at Oxipro in Calgary they do instant exchange so no waiting. I also have two tanks so ideally always have a back up but I use the CO2 for my keg as well so dual purpose for me.

[michika]

Originally Posted by sphelps

Tony if you buy a tank at Oxipro in Calgary they do instant exchange so no waiting. I also have two tanks so ideally always have a back up but I use the CO2 for my keg as well so dual purpose for me.

OxyPro for the win. I also do this, but not for kegs.