are you... for real? that's not how experiments work; it's not how the scientific method works at all
You can't cite yourself to support yourself; that is circular reasoning. You can cite other relevant works to support yours, or the experiment can be repeated by others to support (or not) your findings, but they are not immune to refutation simply because you performed the experiment and published your findings.
it's not that I don't believe that you got the results you say you got, what turns me off is the way you insist that you must be right even though, by your own admission, nobody has actually checked your work. Normally the scientific method calls for repeated testing, ideally by other people, to either confirm and corroborate, or refute, your methodology and findings. Has your paper been peer reviewed, and your experiment been repeated by others? so far it seems like from what you have said, that the answer is probably no, and so why should your word on this hold more weight? because you ran
one experiment that nobody verified?
basically, I am reluctant to blindly believe you because your whole attitude boils down to "I am the expert so you should just take my word for it." Maybe you are right often enough, and maybe you're even right now! but, that doesn't mean that we should all just assume you are always right without ever questioning it and you have done nothing to improve the view for me. Your readiness to insult, argue in obvious bad faith, and then take your ball and go home when you don't immediately get your way turns me off. It's weirdly manipulative.
https://reefs.com/magazine/chemistry-and-the-aquarium-aluminum-in-the-reef-aquarium/
is this the experiment you're talking about? if so I'd say that the main problem with it is that you conflate total aluminum measurement with toxic aluminum. No measures were described as having been taken to account for interference, and insufficient measures were taken during sample preparation. Micron filtration is insufficient to remove alumina; many alumina particles are nanometer scale (~50nm) and simply won't be caught by a micron filter. Fine particles of alumina do not have to be dissolved into aluminate ions in order to show up as aluminum on an ICP test, whether ICP-OES or ICP-MS. Speaking of the chemistry, it seems unlikely that alumina would dissolve into aluminum in water; water is not a reducer. alumina can release aluminate ions in water, but as you noted in some of your other measurements, sea water is already naturally near the saturation point of aluminate ions.
Similarly I don't think it was a fair comparison to use aluminum chloride as your control for aluminum uptake for a variety of reasons. Yes you were able to observe similar levels of stress to corals between a dose of aluminum chloride and aluminum oxide, but that does not actually demonstrate that the level of toxicity was actually similar. The observed effect from alumina depends on localized, slow leaching of bioavailable aluminum—unlike aluminum chloride, which is fully soluble and instantly bioavailable. Equating their toxicity disregards fundamental toxicological principles like dose-response, solubility, and chemical speciation. To put it another way: if we were to compare copper pipe (solid metal) and copper sulfate (soluble salt) for fish toxicity, would we say they are equally toxic because both can harm fish at high enough exposure? Of course not. Copper sulfate is acutely toxic in tiny doses. Copper pipe releases negligible copper unless corroded, and even then, only slowly. That’s exactly the kind of flawed comparison happening here between aluminum oxide and aluminum chloride.
The affects on the corals are interesting though because while the methodology of measurement may have been flawed, and the conclusion that alumina releases toxic aluminum into the water based on those measurements may be exaggerated because of that, the proof in the pudding, as they say, is in the eating, and it's clear that the corals did not appreciate something about it. What is not clear though is whether it was due to aluminum toxicity (whether metallic or supersaturated aluminate ions), particulate irritation, or even something else entirely.
Again it's not that I am choosing to believe that you are wholly wrong. I can agree that your findings do at least suggest that caution should be taken when using some of these products. My main issue is that you did not sufficiently demonstrate that what you measured was definitely aluminum and not alumina, but you still concluded that it was definitely aluminum released from the alumina anyway, and not simply the presence of alumina interfering with your measurements, and you act like you should be unimpeachable over these results which have not been replicated.
