In the reefaction forum there is a chymist that has access to a very large pro lab (He's the head of the metal testing dept.) and he's willing to help test the test kits for strontium to see which is more precise. He was the one who analyzed my water and pointed out the low level of strontium. Strontium in natural sea water is around 12ppm and in my tank the strontium is constantly at 6ppm, so quite low. It seem that even water changes does not manage to keep the strontium level to a normal level.
He analyzed the water from around 10 different tanks and all were low in strontium, even those that are doing water changes each week. Why? I don't know. Maybe some of the corals and creatures we keep in our aquariums are consuming more strontium than we think.
He has been dosing strontium for a year. He's lucky to have acccess to a big lab so he can test this easily and he keep is level around 10ppm I beleive. After we manage to determine which test is better, I will be testing my water again to see if I am dosing correcly. I will try to keep my strontium level around 10ppm or so.
I would not advise dosing strontium regulary without testing. One could surely try to add a bit of it to see if it would help their declining zoanthids but before going wild with this and starting to dose, I would test.
I posted this so that maybe someone with problem zoanthids could also verify if they are getting some results by dosing a bit of strontium and to see if it help. It seem that most of our tanks are low in strontium and it is rare to see one with proper level.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tracey2
Daniella, thanks for starting this thread, its time we figures this out, too many people cannot keep zoas. I love zoas and mine used to grow amazingly, then one day they started to melt, not all of them just certain colonies. I don't think it has anything to do with nitrates, mine read 0, I have noticed impovement with more frequent larger water changes so they must need something replenished. I am going to try strontium and will report back, thanks again.
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