(upbeat music)
- Hey, it's Thomas here and today, we're gonna check out
how you can save a chunk of cash
on Tropic Marin's All For Reef by mixing it up yourself
at home with this DIY kit.
So, if you want the idea of dosing just one additive
to your reef tank for major and minor elements,
either by hand or with only one dosing pump,
so you can keep things simple and know your corals
whether they're softies, LPS or SPS or getting the major
and minor elements they need to grow into colorful
and robust colonies and save 60% of the cost to do it,
then you definitely want to check out
this All For Reef DIY kit.
It's really easy.
If you're unfamiliar with Tropic Marin's All For Reef,
it is a single liquid additive that you can dose your tank
to maintain calcium, alkalinity, magnesium,
as well as trace elements.
It is one of the simplest ways to keep the most important,
major and minor elements inner reef tanks
at the right levels and stable
and unlike traditional two-part dosing,
it will not raise the salinity of your reef tank over time,
since it's based on calcium format,
rather than calcium chloride and sodium bicarbonate.
It also carries no risk of pH spikes
or precipitation events, which is excellent.
Liquid All For Reef is notably pricier
than traditional two-part or three-part additives
and although certainly capable of sustaining larger
or high demand reef tanks like a wall-to-wall SPS reef,
it was prohibitively costly to do so, until now.
Tropic Marin has shared their recipe,
so you can easily make up your own batch
of liquid DIY All For Reef, slashing the cost
by over 60% by letting us buy in bulk
and mix up the concentrated components ourselves.
And it's pretty dang easy to do,
especially because you can purchase all of the components
that you need as a kit that includes carbo calcium,
bio magnesium, pro traces, cationic, K elements
and pro trace and ionic A elements.
There are two versions of this DIY All For Reef kit,
both the five and 10 liter kits have enough bio magnesium,
trace A and trace K to make 10 liters of All For Reef.
The only difference is the five liter kit comes
with a 700 gram container of carbo calcium.
While the 10 liter kit includes a 1,400 grand container.
So if you do pick up the five liter kit,
like the one I've got here,
you can always grab an extra 700 gram container
of the powdered carbo calcium when you're ready to make
that remaining five liters.
To mix up one liter of DIY All For Reef,
you'll need a container that is one liter or larger,
750 milliliters of RODI at room temperature or lukewarm,
a scale that reads in grams.
A kitchen scale works really well for this.
A stir stick or similar implement made
from reef safe material.
I use an acrylic rod or you could use a magnetic stir
to make things faster and hands-free.
And a pair of gloves never hurts
if you've got sensitive skin like me.
Personally, I like to pre-measure each of the components out
into clean containers before I start adding them
to the water and mixing them.
That way, I don't have to stop stirring my solution
to measure something out
and I can just continuously keep stirring.
So with that said, first measure out 140 grams
of carbo calcium powder, 12 grams of bio magnesium powder,
a hundred milliliters of pro trace A
and a hundred milliliters of pro trace K.
Next in your one liter container filled
with 750 milliliters of room temperature
or warm RODI water, slowly add the 140 grams
of carbon calcium powder while stirring continually.
Once the powder is mostly dissolved,
add the 12 grams of bio magnesium powder
while continuing to stir.
After that has mostly dissolved,
add the 100 mil of pro trace A,
followed by the a hundred mil of pro trace K
and continue to stir until the solution goes
from cloudy to clear.
Once it's fully dissolved and mixed,
the liquid will be clear with a mild blue tint
and ready for use.
All For Reef is very stable and can last indefinitely,
so if you prefer filling up big containers
of liquid solution, so you don't have
to make up new batches frequently, you certainly can.
Dosing is really simple as well and you can start
by adding five milliliters of All For Reef per 100 liters
or 26 gallons of aquarium water daily,
testing your alkalinity and increasing the daily dose
by 2.5 milliliters
until you reach your target alkalinity level
in your reef tank, which for most of us will be somewhere
between seven to nine DKH.
While you should also certainly test for calcium
and magnesium as well, both of those elements are tied
to alkalinity consumption and All For Reef is balanced,
so that if your alkalinity is within range,
those other elements including trace elements
should be as well.
Another great benefit of using All For Reef
in this DIY format is that if you find, for example,
that your tank consumes less magnesium
and your magnesium level is starting to creep up,
you can adjust the amount of
that magnesium additive you're putting
into your All For Reef when you mix up the next batch
or if it consumes more magnesium,
you can simply add some extra bio magnesium tear reef
to bump the levels back up, which makes this method
of dosing All For Reef a little bit more flexible.
Despite having a ton of equipment on my tank,
I really do like the idea of keeping things simple
and easy, wherever possible.
So being able to dose a single liquid to take care
of all the minor and major trace elements
and being able to track that with only a single test kit,
like this alkalinity Hanna checker.
And if I want to, being able to put that
on a single dosing pump for some hands-free reefing,
is just a very appealing option
and it's really stocks on the savings.
If you want to see a really cool little,
single channel digital dosing pump that you can use
for dosing something like All For Reef,
you can check it out right here.
I go through both the Bluetooth and wifi versions.
Kind of tell you the differences between the two.
They're both awesome.
(loud sighing)
(soft chill music)
Not sure I want a calcium reactor anymore.
(soft chill music)
Check it out.
(soft chill music)