Help with high Iodine

[Nathaniellund17]

Hello all,
I just got an ICP analysis back, and it’s showing very high levels of iodine. Looking through other threads, it appears the main way this gets in the tank is through feeding. I don’t dose Iodine. I’m doing soda ash, calcium, and magnesium, so that’s the only thing I can think of is the food (mostly frozen).
How serious is this? (According to ICP, this is pretty serious)
Could this just be a false reading - are these results unreasonable?
Other than water changes, is there anything else I should do?

I have two acans that are not looking well, and a Duncan that’s not looking well as well.

 

[ryanjohn1]

What kinda salt mix are you using? Water change won’t hurt.

 

[taricha]

Unfortunately, this ICP company sometimes gives nonsense iodine results. Including giving me a value of over 1000ppb when there was only like 1/10th of that.

This was from samples spiked with 4 different levels of trace elements and sent to 4 vendors.

(Red represents Rick's method based on Red Sea chemistry with +-20% error bars for scale )

It's difficult to look at this data and say ICP-A was meaningfully measuring Iodine at all in these 4 (trace-spiked) samples.
So even a reading of 1000ppb Iodine from ICP-A does not assure you that it's "real". It could be - and was - only around a tenth of that value.

Unless you can come up with some plausible large iodine input (common foods are not high iodine), this looks like another candidate for a blown test from them, rather than a real measurement.

 

[Nathaniellund17]

What kinda salt mix are you using? Water change won’t hurt.

I’m using tropic Marin.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I don't think it is likely to be accurate.

If there actually was elevated iodide or iodate, the only way to remove it is by water change.

if it was elevated organo-iodine, it might be able to be reduced by skimming or GAC.

 

[ryanjohn1]

I believe if you use the search bar here someone had come up with an iodine test

 

[Nathaniellund17]

Unfortunately, this ICP company sometimes gives nonsense iodine results. Including giving me a value of over 1000ppb when there was only like 1/10th of that.


Unless you can come up with some plausible large iodine input (common foods are not high iodine), this looks like another candidate for a blown test from them, rather than a real measurement.

This is what I was thinking as well, but was hoping for confirmation. I’m thinking if it was truly as high as it was showing, my tank would be dead right?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

This is what I was thinking as well, but was hoping for confirmation. I’m thinking if it was truly as high as it was showing, my tank would be dead right?

FWIW, I don't think it is clear what the effects would be, especially since ICP never says what the actual chemical form is.

 

[Nathaniellund17]

FWIW, I don't think it is clear what the effects would be, especially since ICP never says what the actual chemical form is.

Got it, appreciate the replies!

 

[Moe K]

I just received similar results from ICP Analysis about my iodine being dangerously high. Last time I had an iodine over dose was in 2019 and I started losing torch corals but my current tank every thing looks better than ever right now. Here is my iodine according to them.

While trying to research what the problem could be I stumbled on your post and also this video where this reefer tested with 3 different icp companies and only ICP analysis was showing ultra high iodine - 3 Popular ICP Labs get a Audit today! Shocking Results! . Yikes

I am highly suspicious now. As you can see I am usually low. Just sent in a Triton ICP test and will get results in about a week. The only problem is the amount of time that has passed waiting for the ICP analysis test and the Triton sample.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes, I’d wait on the result before acting.

 

[taricha]

If people do find by secondary means that Iodine is actually high and they want to track and manage it on a more regular basis, the Red Sea test kit works fine for that purpose.

(But so far, this thread just looks like very implausible results from one ICP vendor that's known to give some very implausible results.)

 

[Nathaniellund17]

Thanks for the additional replies. As an update, I'm still not seeing any bad effects in my tank. I've come to the conclusion that the test showed a false positive. I have not test again since I got the results. Will update if I see anything new.