Additives

<freakout> I dont know what Im doing!! I thought I did, but I dont. I really dont! </freakout>

As you know, I recently came into some new additives. I don't usually mess with them, but since they were a dollar, I am more than happy to start.

I have:

Oceans Blend Part A (Calcium) and Part B (pH/Alkalinity)
Marine Stabilizer (pH/Alkalinity and essential Vitamins/Minerals)
Reef Accelerator (Calcium and Trace Elements)
Replenish (Trace and Minor Elements)
Iodine
Magnesium
Potassium


2 of these say they mainain pH/Alkalinity. Should I do one and not the other? Will doing both be too much?
2 explicitly say Calcium. Should I do one and not the other? My calcium is already apparently high (as evident from the coraline and the angry guy a the fish store) Where is my current calcium coming from anyway?
3 say vitamins/minerals/trace elements. What does that even mean? Is that like the iodine, magnesium and potassium. It seems like these all overlap....

Should I get a testing kit for Calcium and Magnesium. Im worried about overdosing if I dont know how quickly my tank takes it up. How do I figure out if "trace elements" means I'd be overdosing iodine. CAN you even overdose iodine? Or potassium? DO FISH EVEN LIKE BANANAS???? sorry, I just don't know what Im doing.

You can overdose, so you have to be careful. I would recommend buying some test kits. Generally, if you follow the directions on the bottles, you'll be fine, but better to be safe than sorry.

Trace elements are things like potassium, magnesium, etc. The bottles should say what trace elements are in them (and probably percentages too). If they don't, I'd Google it.

As far as bottles with the same purpose (maintaining Alk/Cal), you probably should only dose either the Ocean's Blend Part A & B, or dose the Marine Stabilizer with the Reef Accelerator. Again, a test kit will verify this.

Good luck!

I would not do both. Some chemicals can actually interact with each other, causing all kinds of pain. Not ALL the time, but I err on the side of extreme paranoia

I know I wanted to wait until I got a test kit before I started dosing, but I couldn't. Curiosity always gets the best of me. My poor little emerald crab looks like he's trying to molt and I heard iodine can help with that so I put some in. Just one dose on Saturday. One dose couldn't hurt, right?

Then, I was testing my water Sunday and I noticed my pH was 7.8! It's been slowly dropping since about when summer started but this is the first time it's been below 8.0. To do SOMETHING, I put in one dose of the Marine Stabilizer. Monday, I woke up and now there's yellow precipitate floating around on the top of the water! WHAT???? I thought it was some random algea bloom at first, but it's not. It's just precipitate...

I don't know if it's from the iodine or the stabilizer or what. My pH is more of 7.9 today though...

Any ideas?

That's weird, Ashley. I don't know what to tell you. Yellow precipitate doesn't sound good or normal.