Iodine dosing Question

[Home_Depot]

Hello I was wondering how to tell if there is a lack of Iodine or other trace elements in in your tank I have some xenia and they are not looking very well and did some looking around and I found some sites that said that they will require the addition of iodine and other trace elements to the water.

Plus my cleaner shrimp is molting like once a week or so


Thanks
Garrett

[redwinger]

You could get a test kit to test for the iodine levels. Do not dose with out the ability to test though as to much can be deadly. I personally never test it nor dose it. The water changes IMO is sufficient enough to handle any consumption needs.

[mtfatwork]

trace elements are in your salt mix. I would not add anything but calcium, kalk, magnesium, and a buffer. Xenia is very sensitive to water quality. I use it as a reminder of when I have gone a little too long between water changes.

[Home_Depot]

OK thanks I guess I will just do a water change and go from there.

[smeese]

I add Iodine and it helps many things. It can be deadly but unless your stupid about it I would not worry. Test with a salifert test kit and go from there.

[gtoon159]

I dose iodine and Pam's Xenia is beutiful.

[Home_Depot]

Mine were to ,as you can see in the picture by my name but now they look like they are melting

[Twins Guy]

Originally Posted by redwinger

You could get a test kit to test for the iodine levels. Do not dose with out the ability to test though as to much can be deadly. I personally never test it nor dose it. The water changes IMO is sufficient enough to handle any consumption needs.

i couldn't agree more...with everything john said...BUT i find myself dosing lugol's 1 drop/25gallons every couple weeks...when i remember...if my memory were better maybe i'd get a test kit-but the way it is a couple drops/month ain't hurting anything. classic case of do as i say, not as i do...
tg

[Sea monkey]

Originally Posted by redwinger

You could get a test kit to test for the iodine levels. Do not dose with out the ability to test though as to much can be deadly. I personally never test it nor dose it. The water changes IMO is sufficient enough to handle any consumption needs.

at last years IMAC one of the head guys at the shed aquarium spoke on this for a while and he basically said that testing for it was worthless because the hobby test kits test for some other worthless form of it and even with the sheds vast resources they don't have the ability to buy the proper equipment to test for iodine.

no idea if that statement is true or not but I'm sure he knows more about it than me so I'm going to blindly believe him i guess.

part of his speech was about some shelled creachers they had that were sick and dieing but nobody could figure out what was wrong until someone mentioned iodine . he decided there was no real method of testing for iodine so he figured out out much it would take to raise it to fresh sea water levels from zero and they molted and looked healthy in days. From what he was saying it sounded like the dangers of overdosing were overrated.

personally i use one drop per 20 gallons every week in the frag tanks but my tanks are filled with organisms that utilize it.

[Sea monkey]

part of a RHF article on it. if you are thinking about dosing iodine, it's certainly is an article worth reading.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2003/chem.htm

Measurement of Iodine: Test Kits
There are many ways to measure iodine in seawater. Even confining the list to those that most aquarists are likely to encounter, there are still at least three fundamentally different ways, and those three all detect different subsets of the total iodine species in water. Unfortunately, those differences make comparisons of the different methods almost impossible, and also complicate the interpretation of the data from any single one of them. Of the commercially available kits, the Seachem and Salifert iodine kits are the most popular in the US. Unfortunately, the use and interpretation of these kits is tedious and complicated. I’d like to hold off on detailed comments about how well they work until I’ve had additional time to study them, but so far my experience has been rather less successful that with simpler kits (alkalinity, calcium, etc.).

The Seachem iodine kit detects only iodide (I-) and molecular iodine (I2). It is unlikely that there will be much I2 in an aquarium as it quickly breaks down into other products59 [to be described in a later article that will include a discussion on using products that contain I2, such as Lugols solution]. A potential drawback to this kit is that it doesn’t detect iodate. So if your tank water matches normal seawater in quantity and speciation of iodine, then it will look artificially low (say, about 0.01 or 0.02 ppm). I would also not advise using this kit if you are adding an iodine supplement that contains considerable amounts of iodate, molecular iodine (that may break down into products that include iodate and iodide)59, or organic iodine forms. There is also the concern that supplemental iodide, and those forms of iodine coming in with marine foods, may end up partially as iodate. Consequently, this kit may substantially underestimate the total amount of iodine present. I fell into that trap years ago in dosing iodate to my tank, and a significant concentration built up before I specifically tested for it.

The Salifert iodine test kit detects iodide, iodate, and molecular iodine. Salifert is about to come out with a new iodine kit (using a yellow color instead of a pink color). Assuming that it functions properly, it would be a good choice for anyone dosing iodide, iodate, or molecular iodine, though it is a long test involving quite a few steps. It will not detect many organic iodine forms, and people dosing such compounds should beware of overdosing.

Toxicity and other properties of various forms of iodine
The various forms of iodine have very different chemical properties, and they should not be confused with each other. In addition to the three forms mentioned above, aquarists also frequently encounter molecular iodine (I₂). Lugols’ solution, for example, contains a mixture of I₂ and I^-. It is the I₂ form in particular that is the basis for the widespread belief that iodine is “toxic.” The I₂ form, and that form in combination with other forms, it is a potent antibacterial agent that has long been used for disinfection. The naturally occurring inorganic forms (iodide and iodate) have little in the way of antimicrobial activity.¹² Even a 30,000 ppm solution of iodide (240 mM or half a million times more concentrated than in normal seawater) is only weakly antibacterial¹³ In mixtures containing I₂ and other forms, it is the amount of free I₂ that is important for antimicrobial activity.¹⁴
In terms of toxicity to higher organisms, the concerns vary considerably from organism to organism. Still, these general trends seem to hold. Rainbow trout, for example, are quite sensitive to I₂, with the LC₅₀ (the concentration where half of them die) below 1 ppm iodine. They are not very sensitive to I^- or IO₃^-, with the LC₅₀ for these species being greater than 200 and 850 ppm respectively.^15,16 Daphnia magna were equally sensitive to I₂ (LC₅₀ less than 0.2 ppm) and I^- (LC₅₀ less than 0.2 ppm), but were less sensitive to IO₃^- (LC₅₀ above 10 ppm ) .¹⁵
Unfortunately, there is not very much toxicity data available for any of these iodine species on marine organisms. Aquarists are left not knowing exactly how high the iodide and iodate levels can get before becoming problematic. Phytoplankton growth is apparently not inhibited at iodate levels up to 1.3 ppm iodine (iodide, which they made from the iodate was also presumably high).¹⁷ These authors concluded “there is little interaction between iodine processing and the metabolic activity of cell growth.” Several species of phytoplankton were shown to be uninhibited by iodide and iodate at greater than 12 ppm, though iodide (but not iodate) began to inhibit one species (C. antiqua) at levels below about 0.13 ppm.¹⁸

In the subsequent sections, it is made clear that macroalgae often thrive at elevated iodide or iodate levels, sometimes better than at natural levels. Whether this extends to other organisms in marine aquaria is not known.