Although you can get these chemicals from anywhere: eBay, Amazon, etc. So, now that you’ve chosen to do it, where can you get these chemicals? Online, of course!Īnd one firm that I’ve seen mentioned in several forums is Alpha Chemicals. It’s also not as harmful to add a lot of chloride, for example, to raise strontium using strontium chloride.Īfter all, the saltwater in our tank is saltwater because it contains a lot of sodium chloride. Sulfates or chlorides of the metal that we want to increase are the most typical compounds we utilize for trace element dosage. Because it contains potassium, you would not want to use it to elevate the potassium level in your tank. Potassium iodide has far more iodine by weight than potassium. Because potassium has an atomic weight of 39 and iodine has an atomic weight of 126. Which means it has one potassium atom and one iodine atom. Potassium iodide has a molecular weight of around 166, and the formula is KI. It does, however, contain both iodine and potassium. If you want to dose iodine, for example, potassium iodide is a useful source. Now consider the ingredients in your dosage chemical. If you dose those other things, the impurities in those compounds will add even more. Your salt combination has many of these fringe trace elements. To obtain them in your tank water, all you have to do is change the water every now and then. That you don’t have to bother about dosing. There are other trace elements, such as selenium, gold, cobalt, and a whole host of others. Manganese sulfate can be used to provide manganese. In fact, macroalgae is capable of entirely removing free manganese from water. Cells, particularly macroalgae cells, utilize manganese as they grow. Zinc chloride is a decent way to supplement it. If you’re low on zinc, which isn’t a typical condition but can happen. Zinc is very vital for the proper functioning of various enzymes in our animals. That are necessary for the overall health of the animals in our tanks. Zinc is another trace element that is especially beneficial in biological processes. You can raise the molybdenum levels in your tank water by using sodium molybdate. Having molybdenum in our tank is also significant because these little organisms are crucial to the overall health of our fish and coral. Bacteria and dinoflagellates that live inside the coral utilize molybdenum to flourish. Strontium chloride hexahydrate, for example, can be used to boost strontium levels in your tank. It’s found in the skeletons of growing things, and snails require it to grow their shells. Another trace element is strontium, which is employed in our tanks similarly to calcium. If you wish to produce your own dosage solution for it, potassium iodide is a good option. If you’re going to dose it, exercise caution and consider performing an ICP test. Remember that iodine is difficult to detect. Soft coral, shrimp, sponges, tunicates, gorgonians, and other organisms benefit from iodine. Iodine is also vital, but at a larger dosage, it will disinfect your entire tank. It’s especially crucial to have an accurate means to test for trace elements because some of them can be hazardous if there’s too much in the water.Ĭonsider copper dosing: you’d never do that in a reef tank, yet our animals require trace amounts of it to thrive. I can’t emphasize how crucial it is not to dose stuff that you aren’t paying attention to. Some of these, such as iron and selenium, are hardly detectable in the natural ocean but are vital to the health of the organisms that dwell there. The easiest way to measure them is with ICP test kits, which you can buy, and I used the Triton ICP test kit for my tank.Ĭoncentrations of these many trace elements vary greatly in the ocean, depending on water depth and geographic location.Īll we can do now is try to find a middle ground that works for our tanks. Iodine, molybdenum, vanadium, nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, iron, selenium, and zinc are all useful trace elements. Not all of them are helpful or even healthy to have in our tanks for example, you wouldn’t put lead in your tank. In ocean water, many kinds of elements are considered trace elements, including gold, uranium, and even lead and arsenic. To begin, what is a trace element? It’s something that’s necessary for various biological processes, but only in trace levels. Today we’re going to speak about trace elements and how to manage their levels in our tanks with DIY remedies.
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