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Tm all for reef?
- Thread starter Ptreef
- Start date
coralfishreef
Non-member
Stick with Bionic if it’s working for you.
I’ve tried All for reef and it was fine, but it feels harder to control because of how bacteria has to break it down. There’s a learning curve. I spiked my Alk a couple of times when tried to dose AFR at first.
The new single powder formula also contains magnesium which may or may not work for your tank. I still dose AFR from time to time to raise Alk/Calc if 2-part dosing isn’t keeping up.
I’ve tried All for reef and it was fine, but it feels harder to control because of how bacteria has to break it down. There’s a learning curve. I spiked my Alk a couple of times when tried to dose AFR at first.
The new single powder formula also contains magnesium which may or may not work for your tank. I still dose AFR from time to time to raise Alk/Calc if 2-part dosing isn’t keeping up.
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First of all, two part dosing is directly adding Calcium and Alkalinity into the tank, the result is immediate.
Like Coralfishreef said, AFR requires bacteria to transform the AFR into alkalinity, depending on the amount you need to dose, and the density of certain bacteria in the tank that transform the AFR into carbon dioxide, the alkalinity can potentially increase slowly overtime due to slower biological process. For nutrients rich tanks, it does not seem to be an issue, possibly due to the higher bacteria density in the water.
another potential issue, which may not be an issue, is that little is known about what formate can do to coral and fish. AFR is calcium formate.
Like Coralfishreef said, AFR requires bacteria to transform the AFR into alkalinity, depending on the amount you need to dose, and the density of certain bacteria in the tank that transform the AFR into carbon dioxide, the alkalinity can potentially increase slowly overtime due to slower biological process. For nutrients rich tanks, it does not seem to be an issue, possibly due to the higher bacteria density in the water.
another potential issue, which may not be an issue, is that little is known about what formate can do to coral and fish. AFR is calcium formate.
OP
OP
What was the switchover like? You dose similar amounts as where you left off with b ionic? Or build up from their starting dose? What's your dose per gallon now? Thanks!
I tested alkalinity and calcium every day for the first two weeks while I was switching over. My consumption was pretty low at that time, and I was dosing 1 ml every day in a 15 gallon nano. Now I'm up to about 2 ml a day or so. As was pointed out above, it's a little tricky because the calcium formate needs to be metabolized by bacteria before the alkalinity is available. There is some debate about calcium formate being used directly by corals, but I'm not sure how sound the data is on it.
Overall I'm happy with the results but to be fair I am not growing anything really picky or any super high consumers. I have a few colonies of montipora, a pocillapora, a few small acros, some lps. No massive acro heads or squamosa clams, for example. My stuff is pretty hardy, as is necessarily the case when you're doing a nano. I do add supplemental iodine based on iodine/iodide testing.
I think two part solutions like b-ionic may be better and are certainly more easy to control, but this works well enough for the system I'm currently running. Corals are growing. It's easy to use.
Overall I'm happy with the results but to be fair I am not growing anything really picky or any super high consumers. I have a few colonies of montipora, a pocillapora, a few small acros, some lps. No massive acro heads or squamosa clams, for example. My stuff is pretty hardy, as is necessarily the case when you're doing a nano. I do add supplemental iodine based on iodine/iodide testing.
I think two part solutions like b-ionic may be better and are certainly more easy to control, but this works well enough for the system I'm currently running. Corals are growing. It's easy to use.
There is a dosing instruction on the TM AFR label. It tells you how much it need to raise 1 dkh per 100L(26gallom) of water volume.
One suggestion is to use an automatic dosing pump to split one day’s worth of dosage into multiple doses through out the day, that can potentially allows the bacteria to convert the reagent to alkalinity more effectively.
One suggestion is to use an automatic dosing pump to split one day’s worth of dosage into multiple doses through out the day, that can potentially allows the bacteria to convert the reagent to alkalinity more effectively.
