Massive Iron Overdose

[Drneil]

So last week one of my three year old twins got hold of my iron trace element and tipped it all in the tank.

I have a lock on the sump door and try and take all precautions. However a brief lapse in concentration could have been worse if she decided to do something else with it, so for that I'm very thankful.

Anyway back to the tank. Although I caught her I didn't catch her tipping it in and only noticed when I discovered the bottle was empty 8 hours later.

I carried out a 10% water change as that was all the salt I could mix until I got to the LFS the next day. Since then I've been doing large water changes.

The corals all look unharmed and alk consumption has not gone down. The only victim so far appears to be my foxface. He stopped eating and went downhill. I setup a qt tank but it was too late.

A week after the incident I've managed to finally get hold of a iron test kit and sent off an ICP. I took a sample of the water at the time and have tested today.

Water after discovery was off the scale, 1mg/litre.

Now is down to 0.05mg/litre.

So my question is would a high iron reading cause oxygen depletion that could have lead to the demise of my foxface?

Also my ph reading seems to be higher, is this linked? I know I now have other factors at play to remove the iron.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Which product?

It shouldn't impact O2 at those levels, and there may be no issue at all.

Some folks dose very large soluble iron doses to bind phosphate.

 

[Drneil]

Which product?

It shouldn't impact O2 at those levels, and there may be no issue at all.

Some folks dose very large soluble iron doses to bind phosphate.

Thanks Randy

It was coral essentials power iron. I estimate that it was about 25ml (half a bottle)into a 280 litre tank. So might have raised it to 8ppm. Test kit only reads to 1mg/litre, so should have said its above this level.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

They don't really say what form it is. But my expectation is that it will be OK.

Dosing Iron to reduce Phosphates?

Just wanted to start discussion here after passing thru GlennF's thread for DSR method where he suggest dosing Iron to reduce PO4 in tank water. http://dsrreefing.nl/phosphate.html And I did fast and not really accurate test - put one drop of phosphate solution in two vials with tank water and...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[EugeneVan]

Which product?

It shouldn't impact O2 at those levels, and there may be no issue at all.

Some folks dose very large soluble iron doses to bind phosphate.

Interesting and good to know. No wonder every time the day after I dose iron into the water, my phosphate level always went down from 0.05 to 0.0 ppm. I always wonder may be my macroalgae are working so efficient to remove the phosphate.

 

[Wayofthereef]

Which product?

It shouldn't impact O2 at those levels, and there may be no issue at all.

Some folks dose very large soluble iron doses to bind phosphate.

Hi Randy I just had the same issue, my dosing pump malfunctioned and dumped 500ml of a brand new bottle of red sea trace colors iron into my system. Its 100 gallons and i have no iron test kit.. what would you suggest i do?