Newish tank, first ICP test.

[LeftyReefer]

I got my first ICP test results back this morning and would welcome any input.
Tank has been up for a little less than 5 months. (140 days to be exact).
using Live Aquaria Salt and RODI, just started dosing ATI Essential Pro a few weeks ago.

Looks like I have several elements that tested low and the recommendation is to boost these;
Calcium
Bromine
Lithium
Manganese
Vanadium

It looks like a couple elements are very low(?)
fluorine
Iodine

And then it looks like a few elements are high in my tank;
Barium ??
Tin

My nitrates and phosphates are also pretty low.
maybe too low too keep corals happy?

ATI says my salinity was 33.15, even though my just calibrated refractometer said 35pt at the time of the test.
My hanna checker said my Kh was 7.8 at the time of the test, ATI came up with 7.64. pretty close there.

RODI test was clean other than showing some silicon??? Not sure this is something to worry about.

I'm currently dosing ATI Essential Pro 2-part, but had planned to switch over to ESV-Bionic when my current supply of Essential Pro runs out.

Is there another product that I can use to boost some of my trace elements/minerals that were low?

 

[Spare time]

From my understanding, tin can come from new glass and new pvc pipes. I wouldn't worry. Just keep some nice carbon in there and do your water changes (if you are already doing that).

I wouldn't worry about those minor / trace elements. I don't believe that those are commonly used other than manganese in things like algaes and vanadium in things like tunicates. If you are worried about manganese, two little fishes makes an iron supplement with manganese (I like to dose iron as I do in chaetogro for my refugium) but still I wouldn't be worried. Your salt will have all of the necessary things in it.

As for calcium, you can easily dose that.

 

[LeftyReefer]

Thanks.

I'm currently on the hunt for some calcium chloride to boost my calcium up a bit.

I'm also wondering now if my nitrates/phosphates might be too low too... ?

per ATI measured (reference)
Nitrate .21 mg/l (2.00 mg/l)
Phosphate .02 mg/l (.04 mg/l)

ATI's numbers match pretty closely with my own tests. I test my tank quite a bit and my nitrates never go above .25ppm and my phophates are always .02 - .04. I feed my fish several times per day and I feed my corals several times per week. I add a few ML of live phyto every other day... But I never seem to get any nitrate or phosphate spikes no matter what I feed. I let my filter socks go unchanged for a month before and phosphates rose to .08. After changing/cleaning the filter socks, it quickly dropped back down to .02 level.

I'm thinking I might want to add another fish.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'm currently dosing ATI Essential Pro 2-part, but had planned to switch over to ESV-Bionic when my current supply of Essential Pro runs out.

Is there another product that I can use to boost some of my trace elements/minerals that were low?

FWIW, ESV-B-ionic will not supplement trace elements, despite having a small amount present. It may be confusing, but a two part may actually lower elements, even those that are present in it, because the product raises salinity too and when you correct for the salinity rise, those ions drop again. The minor and trace elements in B-ionic (and many other products, like Part C of Balling) are intended to exactly offset this effect, not to supplement against consumption.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The tin is not apparently high enough to cause issues.

I'd ignore lithium and barium and silicon (the latter might be a concern if elevated and diatoms are an issue, but not otherwise).

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

My simple suggestion is to boost calcium, and then try a trace element supplement mixture and see if anything apparently changes (it may not). Dosign all the trace elements independently is a lot of work and some (such as manganese and iron) will deplete again in a short time.

 

[LeftyReefer]

My simple suggestion is to boost calcium, and then try a trace element supplement mixture and see if anything apparently changes (it may not). Dosign all the trace elements independently is a lot of work and some (such as manganese and iron) will deplete again in a short time.

Awesome. Thanks Randy!
For boosting calcium.... I plan to use Calcium chloride to get my calcium levels up to where they should be (back to 400+) and then I'll go back to dosing equal parts of my ATI 2 part to maintain those levels.

for the trace elements, I'm looking at products like Brightwell Replenish, Seachem Reef Trace, or Kent Essential Elements. Is there one you like/recommend, or are all of these products about the same?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Awesome. Thanks Randy!
For boosting calcium.... I plan to use Calcium chloride to get my calcium levels up to where they should be (back to 400+) and then I'll go back to dosing equal parts of my ATI 2 part to maintain those levels.

for the trace elements, I'm looking at products like Brightwell Replenish, Seachem Reef Trace, or Kent Essential Elements. Is there one you like/recommend, or are all of these products about the same?

I really have no way to distinguish the various trace element products. It boils down how much you trust those various companies, or hear from others that the products worked well (which is hard for trace element mixtures). I would say those three are not at the top of my trust list, but that is based on other products they sell, not trace elements.

 

[LeftyReefer]

I ended up slowly dosing Calcium in my tank back up to 440-450 levels, and am now back on regular daily dosing of my 2-part.(ATI Essential Pro)

I did not dose any kind of trace elements yet, and probably won't. I'll give things a few months and then will do another ICP test and see where those things are before taking any additional action.

As things stand now;
Alk is staying pretty steady at 8.2.
C is now 450
Mg is 1300

Everything in the tank seems happy. In fact, my hammer corals seems to really like the changes. It has been more open, more fully extended this past week.

So far so good now.