Setting up a dosing pump!

[Zixuan]

 

Hi again fellow reefers! Rescaped my tank yesterday, added some rocks and shifted things around for a cleaner look!
Right now, I barely dose magnesium and calcium as I do my water-tests every mid week and see that their levels are fine. Only my KH is of worry as it drops 0.4ppm every 4 days  which I resolve by pre-mixing a bit of KH Buffer powder with RO water, to add into my tank every 4 days.

Thus, I've been wanting to setup a Jebao auto-doser to manage my KH, Magnesium and Calcium along with possibly RedSea's AB+ since the doser has 4 channels ... But I have some concerns. 

1) Noise: I hear that dozers running becomes rather loud, is there a way to silence it? I.e., putting in a cabinet or small table-side shelf? But I am concerned I will kink the tubings. 
2) Setting up: How do I know how much to dose? 
3) Dosing liquids: What kind of liquids do I use to dose? And what are balling? Do LFS's sell the pre-mix liquids?

At the same time, I'm looking to buy scolys, like bleeding apples, and yellow submarine favias or any that's within $100 hahaha. Drop me a PM!

Hope to get some insights! Thanks in advance. 

[JiaEn]

Hey!  Let me try and answer. 

1. Dosing pumps are generally noisy.  Fortunately the doser only switch on for very short amount of time per day. You can always keep it in a cabinet. 

2. What are you doing to supplement kH etc?  You can start with that amount and monitor. If you have not started dosing yet, measure kH at the same time for two days,  and calculate how much you need to dose to maintain the level. 

3. You have many options. Kalkwasser if the requirement is low,  two parts,  three parts,  diy solutions.  All these have pros and cons. 

You can refer to this post of mine. 

All the best! 

[Zixuan]

Hey ya reefer! Yep I read it! Really insightful! Will try testing out my waters more frequently to see how much I need, before I dive into dosing! Thanks a lot!

[JiaEn]

Feel free to let me know if you need any help 

[Zixuan]

I did some testing and research, and found that my KH drops 0.4ppm in 4 days, averaging to around 0.1ppm per day! Does that substantiate  for dosing? Or can I just make do with drip-acclimating style, to slowly increase the KH back to 9? 

[JiaEn]

You can raise kh to your target slowly (say,  about 0.5kh per day).  Then you can dose according to consumption to maintain.