Thriving reef secrets - Strontium !!! (1 Viewer)

[PSXerholic]

Check out my collection with corals I can frag from on my webpage here:
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Hey guys,
Other then some advertisement for Coral frags, I would like to share another secret which I got asked by many of my frag buyers all the time that see my tank like a month or two after they got their first set of frags.

"How do you achieve this growth rate ???"

Well, the answer is of course that you gonna have to have your standard parameter in check, but there is a hidden trace element that really improves almost "boosts" your growth rate, but can also be dangerous if used too much.
Unfortunately it can be completely depleted into the non-detectable range in a tank and people wondering about literally no growth even with "all" their parameter are in a good range !!!

I'm talking about the effect of Strontium in the Reef tank.
Strontium (SR), is an important part of the calcification process. And many people do not dose it, or even heard about it before.
Depleted, it will limit the calcification of corals and cause increasing CA and MG values, since it's missing from the list of contributors of calcification, which applies to Potassium as well.
That complete depletion happens after a while when hobbyists start wondering after the first year, that their corals do not look like they did before and corals are fading out.

One thing is a fact, if I do manage my SR to be around 10-12, and my CA is somewhere in the 420-430 range, the growth effect is enormous. Visually much more, than without dosing or lower levels.
Another effect is that it makes certain SPS more pink and red, mostly the well known Birdsnest and some Montis, also most Staghorns seem to react pretty effective on supplementation of SR.

Another thing I tell you is, that many people will say "this is not important, I never dosed SR and always had exceptional growth!".
That might be true, that they never supplemented it, but.................
In addition, the importance of SR has been committed recently by even well known marine scientists which called the supplementation of SR absurd and not useful, almost dangerous to do so.

There are some Salt's out there, which do have a fair amount of SR in it.
Reef Crystals for example, can manage with weekly water changes to keep the SR level in Coral farms and hobby tanks around 4ppm which is a good level for colorization and growth results that have potential for more.
I tried that and like to use Reef crystals for that reason.
Also in many brand 2part solutions, the CA part is enriched with SR !!! You won't notice it until you look at the mixture of it.
Kalkwasser typically has SR as a component, and of course some good brand Calcium Reactor media and fossil based media will release SR back to the water in at least NSW levels.
Saying that, many people get SR into the tank while not aware of it.

There is one simple solution to keep track of your SR levels to be appropriate.
Get yourself a Pink Birdsnest !!!
This Coral tends to become white and very bright without dying when SR falls below the minimum levels you should maintain in a Reef Tank.
Other then that, get a SR test from Salifert and test for it.

If the levels get so low that the Birdsnest turns whitish, you are at the point that other corals are going to be affected.

So, NSW is typically 2-3ppm.
If you can, supplement SR to maintain safely the 5-6ppm range.
Controlled and careful, you can try to achieve 10-12ppm, try to avoid higher then 16, since SR becomes toxic in high ranges.

DOSING !!!!
Since high concentrations of SR are toxic to corals, please bear in mind to have it dosed highly diluted.
That means do not pour the Dosing solution right in front of the return pump since the water stream back into the water is high concentrated and can bleach the corals that are going to be hit by the pump water stream.
So careful here. I always have my dosing on a dosing pump or manually dose it into the overflow box for proper dilution in the sump.

ID#15 - ORA Pink Birdsnest

​

When it comes to supplements, I do use the Brightwell powder for my SR supplement.
It comes in small portions relatively inexpensive compared to the Red Sea ABC supplements.


In case you look for a frag of Pink Birdsnest, shoot me an email, I typically have frags of it ready to go or can at least frag off ;-)


Happy Reefing,

-Andre

 

[jqsquared]

Andre great post! Can you clarify the pink birdsnest? I have one that when I feel my parameters are good displays a yellow tinted base skin. Is this the same type?

 

[Cody]

Solid wrote up, Andre. I will add to your warning of overdosing too. I've accidentally pushed mine up to 16 ppm and saw it almost immediately drop the colors in my corals plus stunt their growth. The reason that I'm mentioning this is that I can't stress enough to not dose Sr unless you're testing for it as well. Now, having said that, I've seen multiple reefers get better coloration in some colors and improved growth with pushing the Sr higher than NSW. The 8-10 ppm seems to be around where those people saw good results, typically. Just take it easy and remember that stability is key, so don't push it too fast.

 

[webster1234]

I run mine around 8 ppm and my corals look way better than when it is 2-3 ppm. Another element I think is equally important, at least for an LPS tank like mine, is Iodine. I find that my Euphyllias don't extend as well when my iodine is low. Maybe Andre can do another excellent write up on the importance of Iodine too. Andre?? Good write up on Strontium. May have to get me a birds nest.

 

[PSXerholic]

Andre great post! Can you clarify the pink birdsnest? I have one that when I feel my parameters are good displays a yellow tinted base skin. Is this the same type?

JB, thx.
There are so many Birdsnests out there from different Vendors and Importers, which causes a variety of different corals over the years.
I owned by myself like 6-7 different species, and finally decided to keep only the ORA Pink Birdsnest and ORA Ponape Birdsnest.
The most beautiful one in my experience is the traditional ORA PB, which gives you a Dark to Bright pink depending on light intensity with purple to blueish polyps.

Yours sound like a Pink Birdsnest which also brings out a hint of green/almost yellow. I noticed they can turn completely green when enough light and some Iron will be dosed. Also there are some, that always looked washed out a bit no matter what you do, lol.

Hope that helps a bit.

-Andre

 

[PSXerholic]

Solid wrote up, Andre. I will add to your warning of overdosing too. I've accidentally pushed mine up to 16 ppm and saw it almost immediately drop the colors in my corals plus stunt their growth. The reason that I'm mentioning this is that I can't stress enough to not dose Sr unless you're testing for it as well. Now, having said that, I've seen multiple reefers get better coloration in some colors and improved growth with pushing the Sr higher than NSW. The 8-10 ppm seems to be around where those people saw good results, typically. Just take it easy and remember that stability is key, so don't push it too fast.

Absolutely correct. Increase SR slowly over a few days for the initial balancing.
As well high SR causes actually bleaching.
I've been by accident at the limit of 40 in the early days and had bleached a lot of corals by that.
SR takes a while to get down back to normal from above 40 ;-)

-Andre

 

[PSXerholic]

I run mine around 8 ppm and my corals look way better than when it is 2-3 ppm. Another element I think is equally important, at least for an LPS tank like mine, is Iodine. I find that my Euphyllias don't extend as well when my iodine is low. Maybe Andre can do another excellent write up on the importance of Iodine too. Andre?? Good write up on Strontium. May have to get me a birds nest.

8 ppm is actually safe and good!!!
Careful with the testing kits when expired, also they are quite wide in tolerance.
I do occasionally verify the Salifert SR kit with the results of the Triton test to make sure I still do it right ;-)
Last time, I measured 12, Triton indicated 16....................grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

For future I'm targeting the 8 again as well, or go by the growth of the Birdsnest.
The nice part of it is, you can see the white new branches coming out within a day and observe the growth and further branching if the right level is achieved, and that does stop asap if SR becomes to high.

Iodine is a good one. Pro's and Con's.
Will see what I can compile here on that subject from experience.
Iodine, I do dose 3 drops of Lugol daily to maintain 0,06 or less. Higher is bad, and the line is fine......very fine.

-Andre

 

[Cody]

Absolutely correct. Increase SR slowly over a few days for the initial balancing.
As well high SR causes actually bleaching.
I've been by accident at the limit of 40 in the early days and had bleached a lot of corals by that.
SR takes a while to get down back to normal from above 40 ;-)

-Andre

Getting it to fall is difficult once it gets too high. It's not consumed at a super fast rate, and like you said, Sr is actually in a lot of things that you dose but don't realise. One method I used to help drop it faster is to do some water changes using regular instant ocean salt (you can use this to help reduce almost any of your elements). The reason is that the salt contains such low levels of the elements that our corals need. You have to keep in mind that this will lower almost all of your parameters though, so you should keep an eye on everything. That might not be the best method, but it's something that I've used before.

 

[PSXerholic]

Getting it to fall is difficult once it gets too high. It's not consumed at a super fast rate, and like you said, Sr is actually in a lot of things that you dose but don't realise. One method I used to help drop it faster is to do some water changes using regular instant ocean salt (you can use this to help reduce almost any of your elements). The reason is that the salt contains such low levels of the elements that our corals need. You have to keep in mind that this will lower almost all of your parameters though, so you should keep an eye on everything. That might not be the best method, but it's something that I've used before.

I always recommend to dilute in case of trace element overdosing, large water changes with some cheap fish tank only salt!
Do not use in this case the Reef Pro salts with plenty of traces, it just takes longer.
That's causing the "Yeah right, makes sense" effect in most peoples faces when talking about that.

Same applies to small tanks while they attempting trying to reduce CA or MG when too high.
Salts with low trace elements are harder to find actually these days.

-Andre

 

[PSXerholic]

Reducing Salinity down to 1.023 or so helps as well as a quick action.
Another form of dilution. But not that effective, but helps as well a bit.

-Andre

 

[Reefahholic]

Thx Andre. Good write up!

 

[Mark L.]

Great info Andre! I've been supplementing SR for about 3 months now and my SPS are exploding with growth! Between the tips you gave me a few months back, dosing SR, and adding my new Gen 4 Pros my SPS are growing insanely fast. They have great color and are just overall extremely happy. For the first time my SPS are growing into each other and I'm having to trim them back. Can't believe the growth and color I have now. Thanks again for all your tips and tricks!

And thank you Ecotech! The G4 Pro's are insane.

 

[Cody]

I always recommend to dilute in case of trace element overdosing, large water changes with some cheap fish tank only salt!
Do not use in this case the Reef Pro salts with plenty of traces, it just takes longer.
That's causing the "Yeah right, makes sense" effect in most peoples faces when talking about that.

Same applies to small tanks while they attempting trying to reduce CA or MG when too high.
Salts with low trace elements are harder to find actually these days.

-Andre

Andre, when was the last time you ran tests on regular instant ocean? I ran the tests this year and that stuff is coming in way lower on trace elements than what you need, with the exception of potassium, if I remember correctly. Either way, I recently used it to lower some parameters pretty effectively.

 

[Reefahholic]

What salt do you recommend cody?

 

[dragon99]

Great write up.

Do you have thoughts or have you tried using strontium gluconate (Seachem Reef Strontium) vs strontium chloride (Brightwell and others)?

 

[Cody]

What salt do you recommend cody?

Andre has probably tested more salts than I have, but I find Reef Crystals to be a pretty good mix for trace elements if budget is a factor. It's pretty spot on across the board, but has some slight difference between the range that you'd like to keep your trace at and what it delivers. Tropic marine pro salt seems to be pretty spot on, but it's more expensive. Also there's a brand that Fish Gallery carries that has each batch tested by a third party company to guarantee near perfect ranges of trace elements. I've never tested Fritz, Red Sea, etc

 

[Cody]

Great write up.

Do you have thoughts or have you tried using strontium gluconate (Seachem Reef Strontium) vs strontium chloride (Brightwell and others)?

I'm sure Andre can comment more, but considering that we are trying to keep an 8-10ppm range in our tanks, there's just not much of it being dosed. The amount of chloride or gluconate would be fairly insignificant, if I understand correctly. Andre might have more input on that though.

 

[PSXerholic]

Andre, when was the last time you ran tests on regular instant ocean? I ran the tests this year and that stuff is coming in way lower on trace elements than what you need, with the exception of potassium, if I remember correctly. Either way, I recently used it to lower some parameters pretty effectively.

Never did really run a test, just observed the need for trace element dosing while using that salt.
IO is as far I know pretty accurate on their lab reports being published online on their website.

-Andre

 

[PSXerholic]

Great write up.

Do you have thoughts or have you tried using strontium gluconate (Seachem Reef Strontium) vs strontium chloride (Brightwell and others)?

I can say the Brightwell products (dry goods at least) never disappointed me in any way. Since I always got the "wow" effect, I stick to their products. Prefer their Part A&B, Calcium, Alkali,SR, Kalkwasser, Potassium und Reef Building complex much more then the Red Sea stuff.
SR for 15 bucks usually lasts for almost a year, so a no brainer.

Andre

 

[PSXerholic]

Andre has probably tested more salts than I have, but I find Reef Crystals to be a pretty good mix for trace elements if budget is a factor. It's pretty spot on across the board, but has some slight difference between the range that you'd like to keep your trace at and what it delivers. Tropic marine pro salt seems to be pretty spot on, but it's more expensive. Also there's a brand that Fish Gallery carries that has each batch tested by a third party company to guarantee near perfect ranges of trace elements. I've never tested Fritz, Red Sea, etc

I found the Reef Crystals as a very reasonable salt with fair amount of traces.
Anyways I found out that the Red Sea Coral Pro is even better but provides more ALK, which is kind of shocking on a normal water change. In my case I do the hourly water change so salts with high ALK do not bother me really.

My perfect and unfortunately most expensive salt I preferred so far is the Tropic Marin Pro Bio active !!!!
That's what I'm using since 4-5 months now. It brings in a complex of most variety of traces available in reef tanks.
Our friend Ben, liked to mix the TM Pro Bio with RS coral pro 50/50.

In general I only tested Fritz prior I disposed it, lol. Usually I trust the lab results from Vendors.


So in general, I can truly recommend Crystals to most reefers need!

-Andre