Dosing Pumps

Dosing pumps are used to automate the dosing schedule for a reef aquarium. For anyone who is a reef tank enthusiastic, we all know the importance of maintain stable and proper water parameters to keep our aquarium healthy and our corals growing. When we first start out, we usually will dose our supplements manually on a daily basis. While this is great to maintain your parameters, it is also quite tedious and easy to miss if life or work gets in the way. 

Dosing pumps are a great way to relieve yourself of this daily task. Once setup, they will completely automate the dosing of your aquarium. Once they are up and running, they ensure your parameters stay in the optimal range and your corals will experience significant growth as a result. 

The most common use of a dosing pump is to add trace elements, magnesium, and calcium, and alkalinity.  They can also be used to automatically feed liquid foods and schedule top offs. With an aquarium controller, they can also be used to program an automatic water change.

When selecting an dosing pump, you will want to look for one that has a controller built or one that has multiple heads. Some reef aquarists prefer multiple single units to handle dosing while others look for a single unit with multiple heads as a central control point. The case can be made for both as single units will have less failure points while there is added convenience of having a multi-headed unit. The controller unit will allow you to program the pump rate and delay. Some of the dosing pump units will also allow you to daisy chain them together so they can run them all off one controller. 

Two part calcium and alkalinity is the usual supplement used with dosing pumps. Trace elemental additives and magnesium are typically the other two supplements added making four heads in total. 

Dosing containers are also used to hold the supplements. These are sealed units that allow you to see the supplements so you know when they need to be refilled. They are usually compact in size so they can fit inside your aquarium stand. The containers are best used for calcium, alkalinity, or fresh water as these are used faster than other additives.

The controller is used to set the dosing schedules. All the units we sell are easy to program and have clear instruction manuals. One you have a dosing pump setup you can say goodbye to your daily manual dosing routine and enjoy your tank more!