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One answer is that there is a wide latitude in trace element concentration that coral can tolerate which makes ICP testing unnecessary. Said differently, you can be successful with or without ICP testing.
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This hobby seems to be littered with ideas experts say are musts for success only to be shown later to be not so critical. ICP testing might join this collection of ideas.
It's not critical. I went for over 10 years without.
But the difference is now I don't do water changes, where as previously I did water changes...less often than I should have, and the results showed. Mostly surviving, occasionally growing for a short time period after a water change. But even in the growing times, never the kind of growth I'm getting now, and certainly not the same colors.
And now that I'm using this method without the water changes, which is so much easier, the results are showing there as well. I've had 2 coral deaths in the past 2 years. My issue now is that my corals are starting to grow over each other, because I love encrusting coral.