Lack of Iron and Manganese, impacts/symptoms?

[TX_REEF]

Hello friends! Can someone knowledgeable enlighten me on what are the negative side effects of lack of sufficient Iron and Manganese, individually, in a reef system? I am struggling to get my system to thrive, and the only "red flags" on my recent ICP test were lack of these 2 components. Thank you in advance.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Reduced growth rate and lighter green color than normal in macroalgae is the main visible symptom that I am aware of.

Which ICP company? Iron is hard to detect at natural levels.

That said, dosing both is cheap and easy to see if there's a benefit.

 

[Pistondog]

Dosing Manganese woke up some gonis that were not happy.

 

[TX_REEF]

Reduced growth rate and lighter green color than normal in macroalgae is the main visible symptom that I am aware of.

Which ICP company? Iron is hard to detect at natural levels.

That said, dosing both is cheap and easy to see if there's a benefit.

I utilized ATI; my results are below in case helpful. No macroalgae in my display system, but I am noticing the below apparent issues. The only truly "happy" corals displaying growth in my system are acro frags, candy cane frags and zoas.

• wall hammer died and melted in less than 24 hours. This is the second wall hammer frag that has died in my system with no glaring cause
• favia does not grow at all
• some xenia hands constantly closed while others are open and appear happy, growth is slow
• "black widow" bta has gotten paler in color, but does not migrate around tank
• Yellow tang fast respiration (currently treating with prazi)

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I would not assume any of those relate to iron and manganese, but it is easy to try.

Here's an iron DIY:

Fergon tablets (from a drug store).

One Fergon tablet (ferrous gluconate) contains 27 mg of iron. Dissolve that in about 27 mL RO/DI (my recommendation, but other concentrations are OK, just don't dilute too much), the concentration is about 27 mg/27 ml ~ 1 mg/mL.

I dose ~1 mL to my tank with a volume of about 300 gallons once or twice a week.

Randy Holmes-Farley

 

[Miami Reef]

Here’s a DIY manganese by Randy Holmes-Farely

“Manganese(II) chloride tetrahydrate is 28% manganese by weight.
Here's a recipe:

Dissolve 1 gram (which contains 280 mg actual manganese) in 2.8 L fresh water. Manganese = 280 mg/2.8 L = 100 mg/l.

Thus you want 0.063 mg/100 mg/L = 0.00063 L or 0.6 mL added to the 100 gallon tank to match typical NSW levels.

IF you used manganese gluconate (about 12.4% manganese by weight) you would need to use about twice as much.”

This is a manganese product you can use for the recipe: https://a.co/d/6z1UPtg

 

[Hans-Werner]

Hello friends! Can someone knowledgeable enlighten me on what are the negative side effects of lack of sufficient Iron and Manganese, individually, in a reef system? I am struggling to get my system to thrive, and the only "red flags" on my recent ICP test were lack of these 2 components. Thank you in advance.

The "red flags" and the low concentrations found are due to rapid precipitation of Fe and Mn. Dosing just because of "red flags" in my eyes doesn't really make much sense. A water change with most salts will be sufficient to supply more than enough iron and manganese. Befor doing much effords to make a solution, I recommend just to do a water change and see if anything changes.

If your system is quite new, the chances that it is suffering rather from too much iron and manganese due to much fresh saltwater are higher than suffering from low iron and manganese.

 

[TX_REEF]

The "red flags" and the low concentrations found are due to rapid precipitation of Fe and Mn. Dosing just because of "red flags" in my eyes doesn't really make much sense. A water change with most salts will be sufficient to supply more than enough iron and manganese. Befor doing much effords to make a solution, I recommend just to do a water change and see if anything changes.

If your system is quite new, the chances that it is suffering rather from too much iron and manganese due to much fresh saltwater are higher than suffering from low iron and manganese.

My system is about a year old at this point - I change 10 gallons weekly in a ~80 gallon system. So, this is my way of troubleshooting.

 

[jda]

Unless you have a large amount of chaeto that is growing very well, then I have never found iron to be a big deal. Never found manganese to be a big deal. Water changes are enough in these cases.

If I have a huge ball of chaeto that you have to harvest quite regularly (I do), then I do have to dose iron. I have never dosed manganese other than by water change - that I know of. The chaeto WILL stop growing if I don't dose and miss a water change.

I have never seen the corals care, but I mostly keep acropora and clams which is hardly a broad group.