Calcium questions

[tomato clown]

I haven't been doing calcium tests, how inportant are they for keeping corals and such? and If I need to add this, what should I use?
I will be buying the test kit, iodine, and such this weekend.
I forgot to mention I have hard corals as well as soft corals.sponges,black polyps,gorgonians, and zoanthids.
Dan
[ December 14, 2001: Message edited by: Tomato Clown ]

 

[flydan]

Hey,
Calcium is very important in a reef tank and should be between 400 and 450mg/l. I have had good success with Kent Marine Liquid Calcium. Using a good quality salt mix also helps.
Calcium is essential for skeletal formation in fish and crustations. It also is needed for coral growth and shell fromation. I think more people should test for Calcium and Iodine.
Dan'l

 

[schroder_reef]

I don't test for Iodine, but I use the Ecosystem and its reef solution which contains all that good stuff, so no testing for Iodine required, however, I have used a few things for Ca, I found that we prefer Tropic Marin Bio-Calcium, it is a powder and it seems to not promote red slime algae in our tank like Kents Ca does ( it could just be us). I have heard that Kalkwasser is good, but I think its too much work, my husband wants to try it sometime. I'll let ya know then...
ambie

 

[kris walker]

What I don't understand is that you seem to be doing great so far without testing for Ca or Iodine. How long have you had your current hard/soft coral stock? What kind of hard corals do you have?
sam

 

[megabyte]

Well, they say if there isn't anything wrong dont fix it. In this case I think you got lucky without testing for calcium. I would start to pay closer attention to it. Once you get it at the right levels you only have to maintain it once in a while. I use the evs 2 part sytem 2 times per week and dose with the Kent liquid calcium one time in between that. I ahve heard of some people stirring up the bottom a little bity but I disagree with that method. Good luck!!

 

[tomato clown]

I have had these corals between 2 and 3 months each. My lfs had been doing my water testing and never mentioned that when I buy the corals that they needed the Ca. supplements. I recently decided after coming to this BB, that I would take on this task.
Anyway to make a long story short, I had bought testing kits and untill reading here about Ca. for exoskeletal inverts, and stuff, I never gave testing it a second thought. Now I see that my corals don't seem to be doing so well in an otherwise good environment.
The tank has been established for 2 years as a FOWLR, and I'm somewhat ticked off that I never knew about the extras I needed for corals, never even read it in any books.
The corals I have are Black Polyps, Gorgonians(sea fans), Sponges, green Polyps, Zoanthids, and a Red Plume Rock(looks like a bunch of white tubes with red feather dusters coming out of them)
Dan