Flouride cause snail death?

[SecondCityCorals]

Greetings,

A week or two ago I had a mass casualty event. 95% of my trochus snails died within an hour. They all fell off the glass and went meat up at the bottom of the tank. Interestingly enough, my turbo snail (who is about the size of my fist) was fine. And my cerith snails also didn't seem to care. I sent an ICP test off with a note that said "mass snail death". I got it back yesterday and got a "handwritten" reply saying they "measured twice in the IC" for flouride because it shot up so much. On December 24th my flouride level was 0.4 mg/l and my boron level was 4.41 mg/l. On January 12th my flourine level was 5.09 mg/l and boron was 15.19 mg/l. Interestingly enough barium shot up from 11.66 ug/l to 24.67 ug/l, as well as iron and copper going from undetected to 4.72 ug/l and 1.43ug/l respectively.

Everything else was within range of my previous test. The only thing I can think of that changed is I accidentally spilled some Triton calibration fluid in the tank. Does the calibration fluid that comes in the white bottle with a reagent pack for the trident cause flouride, boron, barium, iron, and copper to increase by relatively large amounts?

Would any of these levels kill trochus snails? And more interestingly, why would they only kill trochus snails but not cerith or turbo snails? I'm using Tropic Marin pro reef salt.

None of my SPS were affected.

 

[DanyL]

I only ever dosed Flouride when it was severely depleted by extensive use of GFO and limited use of lanthanum.
I was advised by the ICP, in written letter to be very careful with it as it can cause a mass death event when dosed too fast, and they provided exact dosing instructions as well.

I don't know what Triton calibration liquids contain, but I do know they often use all kinds ofdifferent elements in them and it could easily contain fluorine, however I would wait for others who may know this better than me.

I'm not sure what method you are using, though if Triton than you must be using individual elements, but I did hear from someone who used mixed 2-part traces and had a similar problem - sudden rise of all kinds of metals, all at once.
In his case it turned out to be a faulty, out of date 2-part trace elements that fell out of solution and it all been dosed at once.

I would do multiple 25% water changes every 3 days as well as put media to absorb the metals and change/recharge it periodically.

 

[SecondCityCorals]

I do not dose any trace elements except for ESV B-Ionic for iodine. I don't use 2 part, I use a calcium reactor coupled with sodium hydroxide in a kalkwasser reactor to offset the PH drop. My skimmer also runs co2 scrubbing media external to the tank.

But all of the above I have been using for a couple years now, except the sodium hydroxide I started using last year.

I don't use GFO or lanthanum or any of that stuff. Sometimes I run a filter sock. After my snails died I ran some carbon and cupisorb just to be safe. Everything seems fine. Nothing else is "acting" weird.

 

[DanyL]

I mentioned both GFO and lanthanum as observers that did the opposite in my case and depleted fluoride to a critical level, though I'm not advising the use of it to combat high levels of fluoride either.

Another thing I would do is to test your RODI water - While I still have my doubts about this one, a local reefer sweared by it. Basically he read 0 TDS on multiple TDS meters but kept getting metals out of range with ICP tests.
He then sent a sample of his RODI water to ICP-MS (which compared to ICP-OES is better at detecting very small amounts of elements) and found out there were in fact traces of metals left in the water which were accumulating over time. Unfortunately he crashed his tank in the process, but installing a double membrane and 3 stages of DI resin solved the issue for him and he now have a thriving and successful reef.

I would also be suspicious of the CarX media you're using, bad synthetic media could potentially contain uneven distribution of trace elements.

 

[SecondCityCorals]

Another thing I would do is to test your RODI water

I like the ATI ICP test because not only is it faster, not only does it test for more things, but they also give you an RODI test too!

It came back clean, well, I have some silicates in my RODI. But I've always had silicates in my RODI. It is incredibly hard to eliminate silicates even with an RODI filter. But everything else came back at 0. It isn't my RODI.

Analysis result

ATI Aquaristik - Lab

lab.atiaquaristik.com

On silicates in RODI, RHF says this: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/icp-test-your-silicon-levels-are-too-high.561963/post-8159255

 

[DanyL]

As long as they use ICP-MS technology rather than the usual, less precise/lower resolution ICP-OES than it is enough.
AFAIK though, there aren't many companies that provide this service, at least not globally.

As for silicates, they have their impact on the reef but I wouldn't worry about it as much as the metals you've been dealing with.

 

[SecondCityCorals]

Pretty sure Triton, ATI, and all of the other saltwater ICP tests are all OES. ATI did state that they ran the fluoride test twice. Perhaps it is less accurate, but also it provides a relative number. My ICP OES test from Dec 24 is going to be relative to my test a few days ago. Same company/equipment. Maybe its off by a little bit, but if both tests are relative to one another, it at least gives me a clue.

I wonder what would show if I just sent in straight up Trident calibration fluid. Hmmm.

 

[DanyL]

He then sent a sample of his RODI water to ICP-MS (which compared to ICP-OES is better at detecting very small amounts of elements) and found out there were in fact traces of metals left in the water which were accumulating over time.

I think you missed my point for using ICP-MS. It is meant to be used to test your RODI water due to the fact that it is able to detect even the lowest amounts present thanks to the high resolution it provides, which ICP-OES would otherwise show as non existent.

 

[DanyL]

Do note that I’m shooting in the air over here, it’s just one thing of many that could be the source.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I do not know if any of those are snail killing concentrations or not, or where they would have come from. They may also be a test error.

ICP aside, did anything change in the couple of days before the snail death?

 

[SecondCityCorals]

I do not know if any of those are snail killing concentrations or not, or where they would have come from. They may also be a test error.

ICP aside, did anything change in the couple of days before the snail death?

Nope. Nothing. My parameters are pretty stable aside from some weird alkalinity values coming out of my trident. Which is why I was calibrating in the first place. I didn’t dose anything or add anything. Maybe a little bit of reef chili from BRS to feed my SPS.