Iodine additions

[Whalehead9]

From the article this month written about Chuck Stottlemire's tank:
"Lugol's iodine administered at a rate of 12 drops daily into the sump and monitored by a Salifert Iodine test kit."

WOW that is a lot, is anybody else trying this amount of Iodine? What in the tank is actually consuming that much Iodine?

 

[Kreeger1]

The soft corals really take up the iodine, I doing something similar in my tank
Erik

 

[Whalehead9]

So if chuck is doing 12 drops for a 500 gallon system, then for a 110 gallon system it would be like 2 drops per day for a fully loaded system. So if i'm only going to try a few soft NPS corals, then I would not need that much Iodine. Just test and see. Does this sound like a fair statement?

 

[Kreeger1]

That sounds right on the mark

 

[sammy33]

Maybe Chuck will elaborate on his testing for Iodine. I would guess it would be worthwile to target NSW values around 0.06ppm. I dose the Iodi+ component from Prodibio but have not tested Iodine.

What are some of the better Iodine tests? Are Salifert and Seachem the only ones?

 

[Kolognekoral]

Iodine is certainly taken up by gorgonians, soft corals and most macro-algaes. As I have all three I do dose a commercial Iodine supplement from Elos. (it may well be Lugol's!) To about 800l I does 2 drops daily. If is see a slowdown in algae growth, I increase by a drop for a few days. I do not test for it.

Although we know certain organisms utilze iodine, most salt mixes have sufficient quantities, if not a bit more than required. With regular water changes, I make 5% per week, supplements may be OTT. That said, I've noticed no negative effects, but then, I'm not sure what to look for!

 

[charles matthews]

Charles Matthews here.

Chuck and I both dose the same amount; we use Salifert's test for iodide only, and target a level of 0.06.

Of course, iodine testing is controversial. Charles Delbeek cautioned me about the reliability of iodine tests, and Holmes-Farley disses them severely. However, I find that the Salifert test consistently gives the same answer week after week in my system, and perhaps this means something. Some day when we really have some clones going, we certainly must do a controlled experiment here!

In my original article I referenced an article on iodine and Leptogorgia. It's worth reading as one of the few articles I have seen on the effects of iodine in invertebrate husbandry.