Reef Vital DNA & Redox Reading

[exodus454]

Hopefully this is an acceptable forum for this post!

I've used Marc Weiss products in the past and never they always seemed like maybe they could be snake oil, or maybe they really did work. Looking at the ingredients on the Reef Vital DNA it seems more like a bunch of vitamins/minerals/trace elements and a carbon source with a fancy label. I've used the Immuno-Vital in the past to help ease transition stress (both marine and freshwater) and it's definitely seemed to help. I recently got Profilux Ultimates for two of my home tanks, I don't use Ozone but I hooked up the included Redox probes anyway just for fun.

I had a few days where I had some stressed looking corals and decided to dose some Reef Vital DNA I had sitting around in my frag tank. I've used the Reef Vital before but never with the redox probe. After dosing it, I slowly noticed the redox in the frag tank start climbing from low to mid 200's to about 330mv over the next few days. It's been holding right around there ever since then, this was about 2 weeks ago and I've dosed it again 3-4 times.

Any idea why this stuff makes the redox go up like that? I'm still trying to get my head completely around what redox is actually a measurement of. I did read "ORP and the Reef Aquarium" which was tremendously helpful. It's interesting to watch redox readings and I'm starting to see correlations between low ORP and coral health. I've dosed plenty of things in the same tank, which is also running Innovate Marine BioPellets, but nothing has ever effected the redox like that.

After I realized the Reef Vital DNA was causing the increase in redox, I tried dosing it on my other tank which is ~1.5 months into starting ZeoVit. The redox on that tank was constantly fluctuating and usually peaked around 260-280mv. That tank is a 75g mixed reef, I regularly dose zeobak, zeostart, zeofood, coral snow, potassium, lugol's, reef energy a+b, and pohl's amino acids. After dosing Coral Vital DNA once, over the next few days the redox started going up and up, and eventually settled down in the 325-330mv area, just like the other tank!

Since then I've been dosing both tanks every 3-4 days with a capful of the Reef Vital and they're both dead nuts stable at 330-333mv. Is this a fluke reading or is it possible the Reef Vital might be more than snake oil with a pretty label? Both tanks seem to have pretty happy looking corals and fish, so I'm tempted to think maybe it's an accurate reading.

Thoughts?

I'll post up some Profilux sensor logs after the GHL Control Center decides to cooperate..

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Let me start by saying that rarely does one see such utter crapola in a modern product description.

This is from the Marc Weiss web site:
Reef Vital DNA is a water conditioning product that when applied allows the dipole water molecules of the aquarium to realign, promoting greater light penetration throughout the aquarium water. Deeper light penetration promotes the growth of beneficial coralline algae and significantly enhances colors.

That's just almost beyond belief in stupidity.

That said, the product contains a number of redox active ingredients, including the vitamins and minerals.

They may exert their own effects, but at least some of them should lower ORP and the others it is not clear what form they are dosing, They also do not list all ingredients since they include biological extracts.

So you may be observing a direct impact on ORP, an indirect impact by somehow encouraging the oxidation of things like organics in the tank, or it may just be probe fouling, requiring recalibration.

I'd double check the last option before looking for other explanations.

Sticking the ORP probe in the bottle may also gauge the potential for the first explanation.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Product description aside, I don't have any opinion on whether the product itself may or may not be beneficial to the aquarium.