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Originally Posted by jtravapd  hello everyone, im just curious what people add to their to tank if anything to help with growth and health of their corals ect. which products do you use, how often, is there a chance of overdosing?...the only things i add to my tank other then fish food is a cube of rotifers a day, and twice a week i add live phytoplankton...i see ads everywhere and in readings that adding iodine helps , but nowhere can i find out how much to add. i have a iodine test kit, and it seems way to hard just ot test to see what your idoine levels are never mind adding some more to the tank..
are there certain vitamins or something you can add ot the water that has a small chance of overdosing?.. |
you can always overdose on additives! Think of all the elements in your water as marbles, you can only add so many marbles to a jar (or tank in our case) that when one type of marble is too many it either overflows or other marbles have to give way. Check out this article on water chemistry, it helped me ALOT with my calc, mag and alk levels.
CalcAlkMar
But to answer your question, I do add 15 drops of iodine a day but only after gradually increasing it. First few days was 8 drops, then 10, then 12 and finally 15 is where my iodine levels are at .05-.06 and my corals are definitly happier for it! I know I'm not overdosing iodine by using my test kit and also I have no problem with algae (too much iodine makes for more algae). I also do a kalkwasser drip at night which is nice because it tops off the tank as well.
I won't get into it but I believe it all depends on what kind of salt you're using as well as how much livestock you have using what's in the water.
I have the Seachem iodine test kit, it took me a while to figure out how to use it but, once I did I'm glad because it was the last thing about my water quality that needed attention and my corals are much, much happier with the right level of iodine.
I'm still a little new at this so I'm sure you'll get more seasoned people answering your questions as well, just thought I'd share what I'vd learned so far, seems to work well in my system. Each system is different though, that's the fun part of this hobby imho, figuring out what each system needs to be at it's best!