Super high iodine levels...is this even possible? 1100ppb

[whitelightning77]

Super high iodine levels? Is this possible? Or ICP testing error? Just got my results back. I was having some STN on a couple sps pieces, but not tank wide. I figured something might be off but 1100ppb iodine just doesn't seem right, esp with the "high" level at around 100ppb. All other sps doing fine, lps, zoas, fish, etc. I sporadically dosed logos, but just 10 drops MAYBE once a week, more likey every other week. Tank volume is approximately 220-240 gal

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

It could be real, but unless you massively overdosed iodine, I suspect it is an error, particularly if this is icp analysis dot com.

 

[whitelightning77]

It could be real, but unless you massively overdosed iodine, I suspect it is an error, particularly if this is icp analysis dot com.

Yes thats the company. Why do you say that?

Also I was dosing lugols by brightwell but at a dosage of 10 drops a week in a water volume of 220ish gallons. I'm also running a cheato fuge and a pretty big reef octo skimmer.

Only other things I dose is BRS 2 part and TLF acro power.

On a side note, why would my mag be so high? I haven't dosed in months.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Yes thats the company. Why do you say that?

This, among others:

How We Use ICP-OES Results Of Unknown Accuracy And Precision

ABOUT THIS ARTICLE This article was authored by @Dan_P, @taricha and @Rick Mathew. We collaborated in the development of the experimental methods, the cost of the project and the analysis of the data. The project was started in August of 2021 with the purpose of understanding the quality of the...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[taricha]

This was from samples spiked with 4 different levels of trace elements and sent to 4 vendors.

(Red represents Rick's method based on Red Sea chemistry with +-20% error bars for scale )

It's difficult to look at this data and say ICP-A was meaningfully measuring Iodine at all in these 4 (trace-spiked) samples.
So even a reading of 1000ppb Iodine from ICP-A does not assure you that it's "real". It could be - and was - only around a tenth of that value.

And this wasn't a one-off. Another data set that did a set of dilutions between I.O. and Brine also contained data where Iodine was ~120ppb in the I.O. and ~60ppb in the Brine, but mixing them together generated a value of ~330 ppb. so a +200ppb inconsistency that was +200% high.

You can click through this quote to see the article and discussion it's based on.

But iodine is hard to measure well, and Icp-analysis sometimes generates nonsense high values.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The salinity is somewhat high (if sulfate and chloride are accurate), and that tends to push up magnesium, but again, I do not know if it is accurate.

 

[whitelightning77]

Well then I guess I won't be making any changes based in those readings. Just gonna do my regular water changes, maybe mix it up to a slightly lower salinity

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

It would be interesting to get a test by a different company and see how it compared before taking action.

 

[stephanjupillat]

Got pretty much the same results today. 1000+ Iodine and also high vanadium. Was dosing lugol’s iodine. Been dosing for 6 or 8 months. Started out couple drops a week for 60 gal tank. ICP showed low so increased it. Over 6 months I was dosing 2 drops a day and ICP stated pefect around 45ppb. Then the eye dropper failed so I bought another bottle. Used that bottle for 6 weeks. Noticed the Drops were much more orange but figured it would be the same concentration as last bottle. 6 weeks later another ICP and now it’s through the roof. So now I strongly don’t recommend using it for dosing as the concentrations differ per bottle. Once my levels drop I’ll go Back to redsea iodine. I use their iron and need 5 drops a day so iodine should be the same, meaning it’s a lot less potent and a lot less chance of overdosing.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Got pretty much the same results today. 1000+ Iodine and also high vanadium. Was dosing lugol’s iodine. Been dosing for 6 or 8 months. Started out couple drops a week for 60 gal tank. ICP showed low so increased it. Over 6 months I was dosing 2 drops a day and ICP stated pefect around 45ppb. Then the eye dropper failed so I bought another bottle. Used that bottle for 6 weeks. Noticed the Drops were much more orange but figured it would be the same concentration as last bottle. 6 weeks later another ICP and now it’s through the roof. So now I strongly don’t recommend using it for dosing as the concentrations differ per bottle. Once my levels drop I’ll go Back to redsea iodine. I use their iron and need 5 drops a day so iodine should be the same, meaning it’s a lot less potent and a lot less chance of overdosing.

I'm speculating that its an error.