Tracing Your Way to Success!

We get a lot of questions here about dosing in reef aquariums, which is understandable. There is a ton of products available on the market, and even more information, not all of which is accurate and some of it is conflicting. One of the most confusing aspects of this is dosing trace elements. Trace elements are natural minerals which are needed by all aquarium inhabitants to maintain biological processes in the cells. It is crucial for corals and other invertebrates that use large quantities of these minerals for their skeletal development and coloration. In the ocean, there is an effectively limitless supply of the minerals that corals need. In the aquarium, the amount of these has to be in balance, and because saltwater only contains a “trace” of these elements, they get used up faster than some of the other salt components. 

The phrase “Trace Elements” is somewhat vague, and it needs to be as there is a lot of stuff in there. They are split into two groups, those that are available as cations (positively charged) like strontium, barium, iron, manganese, copper, zinc, nickel, chrome, cobalt and boron. These can be dosed with Tropic Marin K+ Elements. The other group are those available as anions (negatively charged), and these are minerals like iodine, fluorine, bromine, lithium, vanadium, molybdenum and selenium. These can be dosed with Tropic Marin A- Elements. Together, both these products supply all the essential trace elements your corals need and use in a pure mineral form. 

Both the cation and anion elements are important for coral health, and specifically, coloration. There are more than a few reasons why some aquarium corals suffer from “brown out” but the big two are chemical warfare (see our articles on chemical filtration) and mineral availability. If you want to keep your new corals the same stunning color you bought them as, you're going to need to dose and it doesn't take that many corals to consume all the trace elements available in even the best salt mixes. Most tanks will run low on trace minerals long before you start seeing calcium usage high enough to start dosing. If you have any inverts in your tanks, especially corals, clams and anemones, you should be dosing trace minerals (or doing enough water changes to not need dosing, which is more often that you'd think). 

While nearly all tanks could benefit from them, the aquariums that are the best fit for using the K+ and A- Elements from Tropic Marin are reef tanks. If you aren't dosing Calcium and Alkalinity yet, but do have corals, start dosing trace elements right away. If you're using a two-part dosing system, your tank needs trace elements. If you're using a calcium reactor, or dosing kalkwasser, your tank needs trace elements. See a theme here? Even if you're using the Balling System, which we strongly recommend and can be read about here: https://www.qualitymarine.com/news/the-most-baller-aquarium/, we still recommend dosing the K+ and A-. 

So how do you dose Tropic Marin Elements? This could not be easier. Shake up either of the bottles, measure out one milliliter for every 25 gallons of aquarium water and add it to the sump or directly into the flow of the tank. Then repeat this process with the other bottle. You can do this once a day, or cut the amount in half and do it twice a day. It's important that the undiluted product not come into contact with fish or corals. The solutions must be separated or they will react with each other (negative charged ions and positively charged ions love each other) so don't attempt to mix the solutions before addition. Never dose more than 2ml per 25 gallons and if you are using a complete supplemental dosing like the balling system, start with half a milliliter per 25 gallons. You can automate this dosing using dosing pumps, just make sure you shake up the source bottle every few days. 

The question that some of you still have is “do I need to dose trace elements?” Do you have corals? If so, then yes. Do you have a FOWLR tank with lots of rock you'd like to see covered with coralline algae? Then also yes. The truth is that most tanks would benefit from at least a small dose of trace element supplementation, and no reef tank should go without it. The best and easiest way to dose all the trace elements your tank needs is through Tropic Marin's A- and K+ Elements. Don't wait till your corals are brown and suffering, get to your LFS and ask them to get you started on Elements today. Don't forget to tell them that Quality Marine sent you.