How often do you do water changes? I feel like the correlation between ICP frequency is frequency of water changes. If you dont do WC than that snapshot is more valuable. If youre constantly changing out your total water supply i feel like the value diminishes unless ya have something unusual leaching.
Ati is the better of the big ones...triton is.blah. slower turn around with ati but a better test
I run an AWC that changes out 1.5 gallons per day on a 230 gallon system (roughly 20% per month).
If I am thinking about this properly, I would need to do one test now and another test 2 months later to calculate consumption? And then dose accordingly correct?
Ehhhh....hit and miss on trace. Alk, mag, cal, Potassium, no3, p04 can be pretty accurate. Really, for a lot of trace the only icp is the icp ms test because it can measure in small enough numbers. Ati and the rest often say zero if it's below 1 or so
For things like alk cal mag potassium no3 p04 just adjust accordingly to home tests. If ypur talking adjusting trace elements..I would never do it blindly. The red sea trace colors are good but the amounts you dose are a mystery yo me..lol
Which AWC system do you use? I've been researching them and really like the small changes rather than big swings. I'm planning a SPS dominated tank and trying to think of everything up front
All the basics (alk, mag, ca, etc..) are home tested. It is just the trace elements, and really only iodine, potassium and maybe strontium that I am interested in. Right now I am not testing for any of the trace elements and I refuse to dose things I cannot test for.
I run an Apex with the DOS pump for AWC. It really is a simple set up with those 2 items. The DOS pump is loud (to me at least) especially at higher flow rates so I run it overnight.
i've have good results with the ATI ICP tests. oceamo is a very good option as well.
Salifert potassium kit is good. And use brightwells potassion for dosing
I can find the Salifert potassium kit but not their iodine kit. Is Red Sea a decent alternative? They have a kit with potassium, iodine and iron. Reviews say the tests are complicated and difficult to see the color change in the titrations.
No....to test at home accurately you need to do this...
It uses hanna checker...but you buy red sea reagents for the tester...kind of weird but it works. Otherwise you must rely on icp if you don't use this.
Noted something interesting. Months ago my ICP test would show Iodine around 36. Started using the Hanna nitrite with Red Sea regent test. Found about 0.2 ml a day would keep it between 67-75. This month I started dosing the KZ FlatWormStop. After I started using it, the iodine level shot up to over 100+. Stopped dosing and it stays between 80-100. Only thing I can see that caused the change was the FlatWormStop.
I’m surprised Hanna hasn’t made their own yet, especially considering they already have the checker that works. Maybe too small of a market for measuring iodine.
