iodine dosing for soft corals

[tom66645]

Anyone have any thoughts on dosing iodine for a softie and LPS dominated tank?

 

[EriksOasis]

I have never found it necessary. My soft corals always have done well with regular water changes. Also don’t start dosing anything unless you are testing for it.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I dosed it for years, then stopped. I never saw any change in any organism I was keeping, including many soft corals, some of which were huge.

 

[tom66645]

Thanks for the replies. I've been following your advice, Randy, for many years, so if you're not impressed with iodine, i won't waste the money!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Thanks.

Well, it's an easy thing to experiment with and see if you have any positive effects.

I'm not sure what you could see, however, since your tank looks great!

 

[JVU]

Randy-

So as far as you know, there is no hard evidence that iodine supplementation helps? I remember years ago they found concentrated iodine in the tissues of soft coral and the assumption was that it was therefore useful for growth, but I don’t know if anyone actually ever tested that in an experiment with low-iodine vs high-iodine systems. Like you, I used to supplement for a softie-dominated tank based on the logic, but never really saw a subjective difference between supplementing vs not.

Now that lots of people are reducing or even eliminating water changes, the question of what supplements are required is undergoing a resurgence.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Randy-

So as far as you know, there is no hard evidence that iodine supplementation helps? I remember years ago they found concentrated iodine in the tissues of soft coral and the assumption was that it was therefore useful for growth, but I don’t know if anyone actually ever tested that in an experiment with low-iodine vs high-iodine systems. Like you, I used to supplement for a softie-dominated tank based on the logic, but never really saw a subjective difference between supplementing vs not.

Now that lots of people are reducing or even eliminating water changes, the question of what supplements are required is undergoing a resurgence.

I've not seen convincing evidence that supplemental iodine helps soft corals.

Maybe there is no requirement, or perhaps any real need there is (which is unknown to science, apparently) is satisfied by foods and water changes.

I would not assume that the presence of iodine in a tissue means it is needed or beneficial in a reef tank environment.

 

[Tang cb]

Hi! Everything in my tank is doing great-a 110 gal. My question is that I brought home about a 6” sinularia and it died in about a month. So, I bought an iodine test kit (because I’ve had no luck with Xenia either) and found out that there was no iodine in the water at all!
Do you know if they both require iodine?