By the way one of my Reefing Buddies told me that this (Loving Testing) was a sign of a serious illness ...he would not say what it was
I think the hobby would first need to quantifiably define what stability is. It's an often stated goal for successful reef keeping, but it has no real definition. How much can each an every parameter and element vary, and over what time period before being detrimental? What industry body is going to come up with and publish "standards of stability"? What results in an ICP test just dont matter? Or should every "red flag" that the testing company has defined be cause for panick and a tank emergency post?
Your not going to say "You are my Father" are you
By the way one of my Reefing Buddies told me that this (Loving Testing) was a sign of a serious illness ...he would not say what it was
I think the mantra of "stability " comes from the wide variety of successful systems and the adaptability of corals. People have had many successful systems over the years while doing minimal but routine maintenance and some corals thrive in their systems. Of course a lot of organisms don't adapt and they end up as food for the survivors. "Stability " is thrown around when we can't define the common parameters of success, and that is our observed lowest common denominator. Stability comes in many forms and success comes in many forms.
They can actually vary quite a lot, but just because they’re not dying we shouldn’t let it continue like that. I think keeping most elements in a more desirable range is the best way to go. Some might say…well who gets to decide what the most desirable range is? I’d would answer that by first looking at the ocean values, but keeping in mind that the ocean has very low levels with a lot of elements, but also a ton of food and nutrition available 24/7. It’s my opinion that in our reef tanks need higher values of not only trace elements, but also N&P because our environment is so poor when it comes to food/nutrition availability. I feel like the higher nutrients and trace elements help the corals to color up and thrive more. So my next place to look for those ranges are with those who have been in the hobby a long time, and have contacts with some of the bigger players in the game who do this for a living. They may lack peer reviewed data, but what they do offer is anecdotal data and observations that date back for 20, 30, or 40 years of reefing. Take a guys like Therman, Meckley, or Andre… It’s those guys that I’m also listening very carefully to about what they say. The next place is to speak with or observe some of the target ranges listed by all the ICP companies. This can be a little deceptive, but I’m not going to get into why right now. However, most still have some good data available to look at or offer expiations as to why they have set these target ranges where they did. I’m speaking of people like OCEAMO, ATI, Triton, Fauna, Reef Labs, etc. For me, I look at all the target ranges and consider everything as a whole. Of course it takes some experimenting, but I think at this point i’ve seen enough in my own system to know that what we’re doing is working quite well.
And you'll find that our error bars - based on our measurement variations - in the chart for P is appropriately beefy.
agree that Oceamo's PO4 test is superior. It has a super long cell (like 3x the water length of our cuvettes) for better precision and sensitivity.
Here's a quick look at some data for those who want to see what the hanna P test does vs calculated stock additions, and how it compares to hanna uncertainty statements.
Hanna's accuracy statement for the ULR P checker is "+-5ppb +-5% of reading" without any clarity as to whether you should take the larger of the two uncertainties or add them.
First, here's one I did with new Instant Ocean spiked with Seachem Flourish Phosphorus. This was measured a day after the spike.
The error bars shown are +-5ppb, and the black line is the Ideal case if I make perfect solutions, the stock product is completely accurate, and there no loss in the sample.
Here's me spiking my tank water with known additions of monopotassium phosphate (KH2PO4) - blue data.
The yellow data points are what happened when I tried to run it in straight distilled water (spiked with P) - it seems to fail completely.
(error bars here are +-5%)
And after seeing the failure with straight distilled water, I wanted to know for sure if I could get away with diluting saltwater with distilled (which has seemed to work for me before). Tagging @Dan_P and @Rick Mathew on this one.
Tank water, spiked with P, diluted from 100% to 80%, 60% etc with distilled water. Seems to work fine, and you can likely get away with diluting an out of range tank water sample by 1/2 or 1/4 with distilled water, and the hanna test will still give pretty much expected results. Just don't run it in straight distilled water.
(error bars +-5ppb)
If you take the common interpretation of of hanna's accuracy statement: "+-5ppb" or "+-5%" whichever is larger, then the accuracy statement covers almost all the data above, as seen by the error bars. If you take the more conservative interpretation to add +-5ppb and +-5%, then all points shown above fall inside, even with whatever unknown errors are hiding in my sample mixing, or stock purity, or loss in the sample.
Overall, the hanna ULR P kit is the most impressive chemical test in the hobby, IMO.
That logic is indeed reasonable. If you have the right tool for a specific purpose and you know how to use it, it's unlikely that a general do-everything system or service will give you better result for that one specific purpose.
Right, I find the general way people like Craig Bingman talk about chemical methods with great confidence and ICP with caution to be illuminating. @rtparty experienced the same thing talking to professional analytical types about the enormous cost and effort it would take to actually know the things with the confidence we sometimes pretend we can know from an ICP test.
Test was done on May 11. Sent some info to Christoph.
Super interesting. Thanks for the work. I've searched a bit but could not find any hint. Would be nice to have a post where you explain what is the good husbandry to maintain to "perfectly" realaise a test like Hanna checker or salifert?
www.reef2reef.com
This is a good observation and it points to the bigger issue of why when we use hobby grade test we often get large variability. Most of us are not trained in good laboratory practices and these very small things (and there are many of them) add up to some significant variability..Errors generally don't compensate they accumulate. You might find the series (4) of articles titled "GETTING IT RIGHT" to be helpful ...here is a link to the article page where all 4 are located
www.reef2reef.com
Just my opinion, but few things to consider. I do use the same Hanna egg, I like the toy.
I found these to be very useful and more accurate
