Miracle tonics, miracle supplements and your tank chemistry...

[Sk8r]

Read the label on your salt mix: you will see a long, long list of what's in seawater and IN what proportion. It's a balanced preparation, so that when you add absolutely pure water with all the land-locked farm,forest, prairie, and industrial chemicals removed by your ro/di filter---you turn that absolutely no-dissolved-solids water into 'correct dissolved solids'-type seawater, same as you might get by dipping up a bucket offshore. You'll also note that fish-only salt is prepared without as much calcium as reef salt....but even so, if you have stony coral, you will end up providing calcium in addition---just as the ocean has the means to dissolve more calcium where stony reefs have sucked it out....

Where does it get it? Old limestone and old shells.

Now...read the labels on the miracle potions you propose to toss into your tank. They're NOT just calcium.

Reefer's number one rule---absolutely number one! Outside of your salt mix, don't add chemicals to your tank that you don't have a test for. You do weekly or monthly water changes to supply everything in correct balance; and you test for buffer shortage (which affects alkalinity and the ABILITY of the water to keep that solution steady) ---and you provide buffer at need. That's your DKH Alkalinity stuff. If you're a stony coral reef you also test and add calcium and magnesium, because stony coral eats it like candy. If you're not a stony reef you just keep up those water changes to keep supplying those micro-amount chemicals.

Miracle potions that are chemicals are going to throw that balance off. Read their labels.

The safe things to use are things that suck unwanted chemicals OUT. Rock, sand, and non-rodi tapwater put phosphate IN---and GFO takes it OUT. Your skimmer takes excess amino acids OUT. Etc. Carbon sucks up unwanted organics and takes them OUT. PolyFilter (real good to have in an emergency) sucks all sorts of unscheduled chemicals out---good to have if you find your nephew threw your tv remote and its batteries into your tank yesterday.)

But a potion that puts something into your tank, especially a chemical that is not going to be used as food, is going to pile up and up and up and create a problem in the balance.

Be very, very leary of all the bottle wonders some dealer wants to sell you. Ask on RC. What goes into that tank can be a pain to try to get rid of. GFO and carbon are two 'chemical sponges' that can help, but otherwise, once it goes in, there no way to take all the water out at once to give it new water.

Do your proper water changes, supplement alk, (and cal and mg if you have stony coral) but outside of that, be very suspicious of treatments that put something INTO your tank, because it can lead to imbalance. Go for the ones (carbon and GFO and skimmer, and, in emergencies, PolyFilter) that take things out.

If you get any of the Main Three too high (alk, cal, mg) generally just wait and they'll fall when the mg runs out... but if it's really bad, start doing a series of water changes, like 20% every 2-3 days until you nudge it back to normal.

For the rest, just be suspicious and read labels.

[GSep]

Wise words. Liked this a lot.