Dosing my tanks with chemicals?

[aholley19]

Should I be dosing my tank with any kind of chemicals they've got for sale such as magnesium or zinc or whatever all of those little bottles at the lfs are? If so, which ones and how often? I've got a 20gal with 4 fish, a few polyps and a clean up crew of hermits, a snail, and a cleaner shrimp. New to the hobby, or new to saltwater anyway, and don't want my fish to die or be too unhappy

 

[ralph atl]

basically with what you have, a five gallon water change with saltwater calibrated to 1.026 or 35 should do you.....

 

[reeftankjunkie]

You don't want to dose anything without being able to test for it, to where your levels are.

 

[aholley19]

Thanks for the input everybody. I will just do my regular water changes then instead of buying a lot of expensive, unnecessary testing kits and chemicals

 

[cr500_af]

I think the point was missed... it doesn't mean supplements are not important, just never dose anything you don't test for. Yes, stay up on your water changes, but testing kits are a necessity. How many/which ones will vary depending on how long you go without corals (notice I didn't say "if"). In a FO tank you pretty much don't need to dose any supplements at all, but testing is another matter.

You can, for a while, get along without them post-cycle, but when (see "if" above) something goes wrong you won't know what it is or what to do.

 

[aholley19]

I have a rock with 4 polyps on it which is the extent of my coral so far. Def plan on adding more after lighting upgrade though. So, that being said, should I be dosing my tank or will my regular water changes suffice?

 

[smallblock]

regular water changes if you dont have but that little bit of coral. I've kept my 72 for a year now and never dosed. However I'm fixing to start because I'm getting some sps now. Just take it slow in this hobby

Edit: yeah the dosing is more for coral than fish, but alot of coral will do fine with a good salt mix and regular WC.

 

[aholley19]

Okay. Yeah taking it slow seems to be the name of the game. Which is fine with me considering how expensive every little next step and upgrade seems to be!

 

[darcurr]

If you add hard corals to such a small tank you will almost certainly have to dose. The amaount of calcium available is just too small. I have a twenty long and dose 8 mils of Ca/Alk daily to keep proper levels. I've seen in smaller tanks where the Ca was depleted simply by coraline alge. Before you add coral you should start monitoring your basics so when you add coral, you'll have a reference point and can accurately dose from the start. You'll be glad you did.