Important data missing in toxicity study

[rshimek]

Re: Great Job!

Re: Great Job!

Originally posted by TLowe

Hi Tim

<img src="/images/welcome.gif"><br><b><i><big><big>To Reef Central</b></i></big></big>

The US EPA in their research guidelines recommends two salts for standization, one being the Marinemix formula (http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/WET/disk1/ctm1-3.pdf), which lends further credibility (at least face validity) to your report.

<b><font class="nf" color="deeppink">THANKS FOR THE INFORMATION!!!</b></font>

Based on your findings, I have switched to the bio assay formula and will report any changes I observe.

I will be interested in hearing about any changes you see.

 

[Statman]

No. You are off by a factor of 1000.
Autoin was finding effects at 30 micrograms Cu/l; this = 30 ppb, not 30 ppm.

That explains why I didn't do well in chemistry.

Thanks for the correction.

 

[Fredfish]

kill more animals with toxicity testing, and do some tissue analyses to see if their has been an accumulation of metals, or

That is what I thought. Is such toxicity testing also very expensive?

It seems to me it would make sense that the next step would be to repeat your testing for further validation and then go on to test for metal accumulation.

Unless something changes, as it presently stands, while I will likely be doing more research into topics I consider important for my personal reef aquarium hobby, I doubt I will be doing much in the public venue.

That is most unfortunate. Your articles have been among the more interesting ones posted on Reef keeping. Even if, in the end, it proved that the problem was something else than heavy metals, there is geat value in questioning practices and forming hypotheses. How else are we to advance?

Further testing on toxicity and salts would be very useful to the hobby.

Fred.

 

[rshimek]

Originally posted by Fredfish

Hi,

That is what I thought. Is such toxicity testing also very expensive?

Yes. It is both labor and time intensive. It has been about a decade since I had to price this work out (I used to direct a bioassay lab- but work was done as part of a much larger project with a several Megabuck budget, and we simply didn't worry about the cost). If one did a complete bioassay work up - using say 3 different tests

• one for acute toxicity (this would similar to my work published in <b><a href="http://reefkeeping.com" target="_blank">Reefkeeping Magazine</a></b>)
• one for chronic toxicity (these take 2-3 weeks and involve different animals) and
• one for mutigenicity (a bacterial test - short time duration, and relatively cheap), and

tested, say 3 or 4, different batches of the same salt in addition to doing, say 5-10, replicates of each salt, you might be dealing with costs in the range of about $5000 per salt tested.

It might be less, but it might be more, too. You would have to use a certified lab to make sure all the tests were done correctly.

It seems to me it would make sense that the next step would be to repeat your testing for further validation and then go on to test for metal accumulation.

Sure does. All it takes is lot of $$$.