Saved my SPS with iodine!

[Hillerd86]

Wanted to share my experience.
I have a 20 gal nano reef with a mix of all corals.
After months of great growth my zoas clammed up, LPS colors faded and worst my SPS were bleaching.
Tried lighting, water changes, moving frags... All failed.
Then I came across a forum post on here and started dosing iodine (iodide).
Bam! 3 weeks later everything went back to normal! I lost 90% of a Monti and its back in full and even bigger now.
Also just sent in one of those send away water tests and my iodine even with dosing was low. (I was dosing lightly out of fear of overdosing.)
Watch the oddball parameters. Apparently they can nuke your tank haha

 

[Hillerd86]

 

[Hillerd86]

Before and after

 

[najer]

Nice mystic sunset, my fav. monti.

 

[Bleigh]

Wow! That's some magic there!

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Big fan of Iodine myself, dose it every day.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Wanted to share my experience.
I have a 20 gal nano reef with a mix of all corals.
After months of great growth my zoas clammed up, LPS colors faded and worst my SPS were bleaching.
Tried lighting, water changes, moving frags... All failed.
Then I came across a forum post on here and started dosing iodine (iodide).
Bam! 3 weeks later everything went back to normal! I lost 90% of a Monti and its back in full and even bigger now.
Also just sent in one of those send away water tests and my iodine even with dosing was low. (I was dosing lightly out of fear of overdosing.)
Watch the oddball parameters. Apparently they can nuke your tank haha

Nice! Can you tell us how much you dosed and why? Also link to the other thread?

 

[Hillerd86]

Nice! Can you tell us how much you dosed and why? Also link to the other thread?

I just followed the bottle. Kent brand.
It says 8 drops daily for 50gal.
My tank is 20gal which comes to 3 and change drops.
At first because I know my rocks and stuff take up water volume so I did 2 drops per day. That's when the pics above were taken after a few weeks. Since then I sent out for a detailed water analysis and it came back with the iodine only at .01ppm when the ideal is .06.
So that told me it was safe to go to 3 drops daily. Been doing that for the last few weeks with positive results.

 

[ReefLab]

Ive run into a similar issue. Glad your tank is looking better! Curious what salt you're using? Also do you have a full tank shot so we can get an idea of how many corals are using the amount that you're dosing?

 

[Ike]

Perhaps there's a correlation, but without knowing anything about your tank and the situation it's HIGHLY unlikely that your corals were struggling due to you not supplementing iodine unless you never feed your tank.

 

[Hillerd86]

I use the LiveAquaria brand reef salt. I do about 10-15% water change weekly.
All my other parameters are pretty good. Some slight Nitrates (10-20 ppm) and some phosphates. I sort of stopped measuring phosphates because feeding reef-roids once or twice a week would give me false results.

 

[Hillerd86]

Perhaps there's a correlation, but without knowing anything about your tank and the situation it's HIGHLY unlikely that your corals were struggling due to you not supplementing iodine unless you never feed your tank.

I was careful to jump to conclusions as well. Causation vs. Correlation ...
Just figured I would post in case someone ran into a similar issue.
Since my measured lab parameters showed a low iodine level I am gaining a little more confidence in the result.
Its always really hard to get a solid scientific result in this hobby.
Another piece of evidence is that the Monti frag came from a mother coral at my work. 3 of us took a frag around the same time. All of us experienced similar stories.... 1. nice growth for a few months... 2. random bleaching after that.
Mine was the only one to come back with the iodine dosing. The other guys didnt dose and theirs continued to bleach and die.
For sure circumstantial evidence, but worth a look I think.
I'll post a picture later.

 

[Hillerd86]

Definitely have a decent amount of coral in a small tank, so that could be contributing. However as I mentioned above my friend had the same frag on his 60 gal with less corals and it bleached.

 

[drawman]

FYI Iodine depletes pretty quickly so it may be tough to take the ICP number at face value. So I would still tend to underdose just so you don't develop a problem in the other direction.

It is interesting that there are some anecdotes of people having better results with iodine dosing. It may be one of those things to try when you just can't keep acros and everything else you've tried hasn't worked (in an established system of course).

 

[Ike]

FYI Iodine depletes pretty quickly so it may be tough to take the ICP number at face value. So I would still tend to underdose just so you don't develop a problem in the other direction.

It is interesting that there are some anecdotes of people having better results with iodine dosing. It may be one of those things to try when you just can't keep acros and everything else you've tried hasn't worked (in an established system of course).

It seems like iodine is always "low" with icp. Crustaceans and mollusks would probably suffer if it was truly "low". Anyone that feedas regularly, and especially that feeds greener foods, shouldn't ever have to dose iodine. There's an old article that measures iodine additions of food and it generally amounts to many times what is believed to be the daily needs of typical aquarium inhabitants. In short, it seems rare that any aquarium that's fed would need dosing. That said, it's a pretty harmless supplement as long as you don't get crazy with the dosing. So, if you think it's helping, I don't see any harm.

Came across this old thread that might be of some use...

Effects of Iodine in SPS?

I can't figure out what effects would Iodine have in SPS if any. I have been having issues keeping SPS healthy on my 400 gallon tank for some time now, and after crossing out all the obvious things like stability, lights, nutrients and a lot of testing and talking to a lot of people, I have not...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Hillerd86]

A lot of interesting posts. I do feed pretty much just frozen shrimp and/or krill. Not sure if that would add the iodine you mentioned above. Not too much green going in.
Brainstorming I thought of a few other possible causes.
1. I did add a few coral around the time the montis started bleaching. Could they have sucked a lot of nutrients out short term and then it restabilized? Maybe
2. It was the summer and since it's a small tank the temp did swing a little some days before I noticed. Normal 77F, max swings 75-79F. However this has happened again since the comebacks with no I'll affects.

This hobby is always tough to tell with all the variables.

 

[Zero1091]

Iodine has also made a significant difference in many of my corals when I started introducing more sps into my mixed tank.
corals were bleaching and dying. Regular weekly water changes were no longer cutting it. Tested my tank and it had no detectable iodine. I began dosing it and corals literally came back from the grave.

 

[Hillerd86]

Iodine has also made a significant difference in many of my corals when I started introducing more sps into my mixed tank.
corals were bleaching and dying. Regular weekly water changes were no longer cutting it. Tested my tank and it had no detectable iodine. I began dosing it and corals literally came back from the grave.

That was my exact experience.

 

[Zero1091]

That was my exact experience.

Just be careful when you dose it, too much and things can go very wrong. I began dosing Seachem reef plus which has iodine and reef trace and it kept all my elements in check. Its Inexpensive and from my experience sps relied more it than my lps/ soft corals.

 

[Hillerd86]

Just be careful when you dose it, too much and things can go very wrong. I began dosing Seachem reef plus which has iodine and reef trace and it kept all my elements in check. Its Inexpensive and from my experience sps relied more it than my lps/ soft corals.

That has been my experience as well. My montis bleached while all others seemed fine. However I did notice that my LPS and others are more vibrant and growing faster as well.