We supplement our office tank in Episode #18 of Building A Budget Reef Aquarium. What does it mean to supplement a tank? Basically, we have both fish and corals and as the corals in particular start to grow to build their bodies they're going to suck elements out of the water. As they suck them out we're going to need to put them back in so they can continue to grow.

In our previous video on testing, we talked about measuring alkalinity. This is generally the best proxy for when the trace elements start to drop, so I know that when we started this tank with freshly mixed water we had an alkalinity of about 7.5. In our most recent test, I'm seeing 6.8 dKH alkalinity in this tank, which means the corals have sucked out alkalinity. It could also be things like snails or some coralline algae or other invertebrates in the tank. But regardless of exactly which animal it is, we're seeing those levels drop as the animals in the tank take the elements out of the water and build them into their bodies.

When it comes to supplementing your tank there are a few different ways of doing it as well as a few different things to supplement. The two most important things are calcium and alkalinity, and that's because calcium and alkalinity together make up calcium carbonate which is the building block of anything calcium-based in the tank, whether it's a clam shell a snail shell, or a coral skeleton. Reef aquariums tend to need to supplement calcium and alkalinity at the same time.

The most important additive after calcium and alkalinity is magnesium. Magnesium is consumed by corals. More importantly, if your magnesium level is off you cannot put calcium and alkalinity in the tank. You'll just keep pouring it in and it'll precipitate out and the levels will not go up.

There are a few different ways of supplementing calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium. Probably the most popular today is supplementing with individual bottles of calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium. That works perfectly fine. You can also use a calcium reactor that melts old coral skeletons and then as those coral skeletons melt it puts all the calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium that they once consumed back into the tank. You could also use kalkwasser, which is a one-part calcium and alkalinity supplement. But kalkwasser is more complicated to add to a tank than a simple liquid because it has to be introduced slowly into the tank. And with kalkwasser you would still need to add a magnesium to the tank.

We're going to use a new type of additive and that is a one-part solution. For many, many years keeping reef aquariums, this kind of product didn't exist. Now we're seeing it from a few brands and the one we're going to use is Fauna Marin Ready2Reef. This supplement includes calcium, alkalinity, magnesium, and a whole bunch of other trace elements. And what makes this supplement unique is in the past nobody made anything like this because if you tried combining them they would just precipitate out into solids and you'd have no liquid to dose to the tank anymore.

What allows this one to be dosed to the tank is there's no alkalinity in this bottle. But when you add this Ready2Reef to the tank the bacteria process it and produce carbonate or alkalinity as a byproduct. With this one-part solution, you only have one thing to dose. You should be able to just monitor the alkalinity and everything should stay in balance because they move proportionately as you dose it to the tank.

Our recommendation is you start with the manufacturer's recommended dose, then test the next day to see what happens. How much did it boost it up? In this case we're going to dose 10 mL. The recommended dose is 5 mL per 26 gallons. This is a 55-gallon tank, so that's just about the correct dose. Just pour in the Ready2Reef liquid. When you pour it in you want to pour it into a place of high water flow so that it helps it dissolve. We have a pump in the right corner of the office tank we're dosing. I just pour it right in front of the pump, and swish out the measuring cup, and that's that.

Normally we could go ahead and test our alkalinity in an hour or so if we were using a different kind of additive, but because this Ready2Reef produces alkalinity through a biological process I'll wait and test the next day That way it can go through the aquarium, the bacteria can process it, and we should see the alkalinity increase in the morning. Our alkalinity starting point is 6.8 dKH. If the following day, after adding Ready2Reef, I see 6.9 dKH, I know it increased by one. This will help me to know how much to dose. Ideally, I want a dKH of from 7 to 12.

Every reef aquarium is a bit different, and you just need to monitor your tank to know how much to dose every day. If you test and your dKH is going down, you need to dose more. The coral is consuming more than what you're adding. If the number starts to go up, and you're already between 7 and 12 dKH, you need to dose a little bit less

With this kind of supplement, you are best doing small doses daily. It's not that much work. When you feed your fish you just pour a little bit of Ready2Reef in as well.

Hopefully, you like what you saw in this video. If you like this video Like and Subscribe. There's more to come. We're going to customize the filter media, keep adding more and more corals, and you're going to see this reef tank come along.