Dosing

[joeyprice]

I am going to assume that while I'm still in the honeymoon phase with this tank that I won't mind dosing by hand as much as will after some time has passed. With that in mind I'd like to start planning on dosing. Aside from the standard 2 part what else is critical? Is a 4 head pump adequate? Is there a significant difference in the brands of pumps? There seems to be a pretty wide range in price and I'd rather buy once/cry once than buy a basic 2 part system only to have to upgrade or replace it down the line.

 

[lmm1967]

Thats going to be a little tough to answer. What are you intentions for coral with the tank? How often and large will your water changes be? what size tank? do you have a controller? do you want an ecosystem or are you OK with solutions from different vendors?

Neptune DOS are nice - but they only come in 2 head models and you have to be an Apex user.
GHL dosing - for the most part - is rock solid and reliable. Expensive but many options and you can use them whether you have a ghl controller or not
BRS 1.1ml dosers are cheap and reliable but you need a reliable way to turn them on/off.
Jabeo dosers are cheap and generally work pretty well - you need to keep an eye on them though just in case something does haywire.

At first you can most likely get by without dosing by doing water changes. Manual dosing can work but if you have sensitive SPS corals they won't thrive as much as when you start auto dosing. Most people start with either Kalkwasser or 2 part. BRS has great videos on all of that.

I just took delivery of a couple Versa dosers - they have had a few challenges according to early adopters but Ecotech seems to have stepped up and addressed those. I currently only dose 1 solution so these will work fine for me. If I get to the point where dosing 1 solution isn't enough or doesn't provide me enough control - I have a calcium reactor sitting in a closet and I'l switch over to that.

 

[jcook54]

Here's what I dose: Fusion 1, Fusion 2, Aminos (Acropower). In my case, a 4 head doser is all I need and even then I've got one to spare. I ended up getting a Jebao doser and everything has worked just fine for 1 yr+. There is no doubt in my mind that the more expensive options are better units but every Jebao product I've used has worked really well. With the Jebao doser in particular, I wouldn't 'set it and forget it' but I wouldn't do that for any doser.