I'm loving the discussion about nutrients and trace. I'm personally quite frustrated at how quickly my trace nutrients get depleted in my tank (despite not much coral growth, and mostly frags; I started with dry rock and bacteria, this tank is the slowest tank to maturity I've ever had, by probably 8 months to a year). I'm dosing trace now (based on Triton results) and seeing improvements directly related to the tracing dosing, but I'm just generally really frustrated that the old adage was "keep nutrients in check, water changes or not, stability will bring success", and I'm personally really struggling with keeping stability without frequent water changes and dosing and other things that are expensive and technically complex.
I guess the "new" theory of moderate nutrient load is in that boat too, that people are pushing for higher nutrients these days to promote growth and color. I guess back in the day with less flow and less efficient equipment, there was always higher nutrients around as a rule, and along with that was probably higher trace elements from food impurity?
I think all of the ICP testing is still done in Germany. For my (and my friend's as well) ICP tests in the states with Triton, we send them to California, and then when they arrive there, we get a notification that they're being bundled and sent to Germany so we should have results soon. So I think they still only have one lab (ICP machines have high start-up and operating costs), and forward all of the tests from around the world there.
I had intended to respond to this sooner but, as usual, I got side tracked.
The whole trace elements industry is a bit confounding.. I see fantastic tanks, like Big E's tank that don't use any trace elements. There are plenty others out there as well.. I've also seen plenty of tanks that weren't doing well, do much better with trace element additions.
My old tank which was a 500 gallon system with a huge ca reactor did amazingly well without any additions. And infrequent water changes. It was loaded with large colonies.. mostly wild.
Never added anything.. but I pulled it down when I had to renovate and maybe I was 2 weeks away from a crash.. who knows.
My current tank gets a good amount of automatic trace element dosing.. still USA a ca reactor.
Keep in mind that if you are dosing two part- unless you are mixing your own basic solutions, you are adding some trace elements. All the ca components from the big makers of two part solutions have some trace elements added.
I get the frustration with having to add this and that- that's why I went with dosers for my carbon source and trace elements. Makes life much easier.. I even went to flake/pellet food only and put it in a timer so I don't have to add food either.
Icp test are indeed all sent to Germany. In Canada, They are collected here in montreal (or north of montreal) and then shipped weekly to Germany.
My last icp test showed I was low in magnesium and strontium in particular and then slightly low in many of the elements that algea would consume- iodine, iron, potassium zinc, manganese and a couple others.. I decided to reduce the photoperiod on my cheato based on this.. I'm not sure if my reasoning is sound because I assume corals use many of the same elements as plants.. we'll see.. I'm gonna do another icp soon..
Starting a new tank from frags is tough.. balancing nutrients as the tank matures and as you add corals and fish is tricky.
My tank at home has always had high nutrients and I find that is I really push to drop them to ultra low levels, the corals really suffer but I take care of a tank that started off with a nutrient reducing carbon source and has always had one. If I try to get nutrient off the floor in that tank, it goes wild with nuisance algea and corals suffer... so.... go figure!!
I think it all goes to show how adaptable the corals are and yet still fragile and sensitive to parameter swings that are outside of their adaptation "˜window'..
My current target for n and p is n- around 5-10 and p .05-.08..
I'm still not sure I like my colors now more than I did when I had 20-30 ppm for n and .12-.22 for p.. HOWEVER, back then I was using MH, now I'm using led and t5..
I am forever tempted to go back to mh.. but that's a whole other issue..
So here's a teaser shot from my tank. It's a fish eye lens view top down centre..
I'll post more shots in a bit.. finally got the real camera out..
