How do you guys feel about this buffer?

[joker577]

I picked it up for 4$ and I don't really need it yet (not a lot of nutrient use) but I wanted you guys' opinions

 

[ac7av]

What buffer?

 

[joker577]

Doh did it again, it's this one
http://www.marineandreef.com/v/vspfiles/photos/RKM00857-1.jpg

 

[Herefishyfishy]

I picked it up for 4$ and I don't really need it yet (not a lot of nutrient use) but I wanted you guys' opinions

Hard to tell in pics but looks like part A&B and they have very little to do with nutrients.
I mostly advise against fixing things that ain't broke, especially when it can really mess things up. Dosing is one way to crash a tank.
Stick with water changes until your growth exceeds what water changing can replace. And then only dose after reading up on the what, when, why, how, and how much.

 

[joker577]

I didn't mean nutrients like nitrates ammonia etc. I meant like calcium alkalinity etc. lol, but that's what I was planning on doing

 

[Herefishyfishy]

I didn't mean nutrients like nitrates ammonia etc. I meant like calcium alkalinity etc. lol, but that's what I was planning on doing

Cool, those are called minerals or often elements.
Salt parameters...

 

[capdippe]

I'm gonna jump on this one too. I've been doing this for 6 months now and am using britweells slat mix. Every time I test a new batch I get rather low levels of cal/mag 300/900-1000. I end up dosing the new batch X4 to get close to what the tank is (420-450/1200-1400). Then I end up dosing the tank with the minerals a little later. I use about 15ppm of cal daily, and about .5 alk daily as well. I like your thought of just doing water changes till you need to dose, I'm a fan of easy reef keeping, but hell if I did this my water would be low on it's elements.

 

[capdippe]

I should rephrase that the tank consumes 15cal and .5 alk in a 24 hour period.

 

[Boomer]

That Kent stuff has been out a long time and is a two-part Alk and Calcium. It is about the same as Bi-Ionic or C- Balance or BRS two-part.

15cal and .5 alk in a 24 hour period.

Can't happen there must be a testing error here. If you loose 15 ppm Ca++ / day you HAVE to loose at least .75 meq / l ALk and more than like you would be using 1 meq / l. That 15 ppm Ca++ looks like the testing error. Meaning, I'll bet you are loosing more like 8 ppm Ca++ / day and .5 meq/ l / day. To loose 15 ppm Ca++ /day you would have to have a tank filled with massive amounts of SPS corals.

Now, is that claimed .5 as dKH or Meq / l. If it is dKH that makes you testing error even worse. When you loose 20 ppm Ca++ you loose 2.8 dKH or 1 meq / l. At .5 dKH that is ~ 3-4 ppm Ca++ / day. Looks to me like you did not divide your calcium reading by 4 which some test kits do. 15 / 4 = 3.75 Ca++ and right on the noise with the 3-4 ppm.

 

[capdippe]

Thanks for the info, I didn't divide by 4. I think your numbers are dead on. I have a difficult time reading the advanced instructions on brightwells products.

 

[Boomer]

Ok cool cap