Reef nutrition

ICP test of available for purchase natural seawater

I deff do a wiff test on nsa lol! only just a couple times Ive had to toss it out in the past due to smell kept in sealed container in cool garage.. But that was like 6-7 years ago when there would be copepods Pelagic larvae and other life forms still alive and swimming in the nsa we would get.. Im not sure if they filter it more somewhat now? Just don’t see anything swimming anymore..Im sure someone has bivalves living in larger nsa storage tanks life always finds a way!
 
Alexander1312 said:
This test took a while to reach its destination, which is an issue with the FM tests and I really hope they have the West Coast ICP collection point established soon.

The good news is that this water seems to be really in good shape. I could not find any problem with the results even though some of them are a little outside the range, and there are still 0 values which might need to be managed individually, but not necessarily as this is due to the way it is being tested (and some might be influenced by the travel time).

Main drawback is the lower alkalinity and salinity, but this is not a dealbraker in my opinion.
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Very helpful, thank you for testing it and especially for sharing.

The phosphate is quite high, disturbing if true.
 
JVU said:
Very helpful, thank you for testing it and especially for sharing.

The phosphate is quite high, disturbing if true.
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Missed looking at phosphate (did not expect this to be an issue). The way they test phosphate should get out decently accurate results. But I do not know much the travel impacts the result, but this is actually an issue at least for me since bringing in fresh sea water at that level is a deal breaker.
 
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Alexander1312 said:
On this note, apparantly some folks have sent in their skim mate to understand how many traces are being pulled out from the skimmer (obviously do not do that!).
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JVU said:
Phosphate is one of the things we can test easily. Maybe someone can test the phosphate in their NSW from the delivery guy and let us know?
@Thales @Kensington Reefer @under_water_ninja
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I wish I would have tested this. Did salinity, Alk and CA. My alk measurements were 0.4 higher than what ICP had, CA was 10 mg higher and there was a match with salinity. Again, did not think phosphate is an issue, so very curious what we test.
 
JVU said:
Very helpful, thank you for testing it and especially for sharing.

The phosphate is quite high, disturbing if true.
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I remember at the academy that's one of the reasons why they stopped using it (the other being they couldn't get a long enough tube for cleaner water). The need for crazy amounts of gfo made it not cost effective.

I bet it goes up in winter when there's farm runoff.

But is the high amount of orthophosphate coming from microscopic critters getting fried by the ICP method? Not sure if they run the sample through a 0.2 um or smaller filter prior to running. I know you usually microwave samples to denature any proteins or DNA. I also don't know what type of phosphate is bound up in organisms vs. free phosphates.
 
PjFish said:
I deff do a wiff test on nsa lol! only just a couple times Ive had to toss it out in the past due to smell kept in sealed container in cool garage.. But that was like 6-7 years ago when there would be copepods Pelagic larvae and other life forms still alive and swimming in the nsa we would get.. Im not sure if they filter it more somewhat now? Just don’t see anything swimming anymore..Im sure someone has bivalves living in larger nsa storage tanks life always finds a way!
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That's odd. They have always filtered it. I've used tens of thousands of gallons since early 2000's and never saw any life, at times that would have been nice actually :p

Where have you been getting it from?
 
BAYMAC said:
That's odd. They have always filtered it. I've used tens of thousands of gallons since early 2000's and never saw any life, at times that would have been nice actually :p

Where have you been getting it from?
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The NSW is filtered to 5 micron and then 1 micron pleated canister filters.
I HAVE found muscles and eucid worms at the bottom of my reservoirs in the past!

But like you G, I’ve been through 1000’s of gallons
 
This is useful data. Given the salinity is slightly lower than folks tend to run, and saltwater is going to be very consistent with its parameters, it seems if people wanted higher alk then putting a bit of your favorite high-dKh salt in would be the easiest way to boost numbers. Eg toss a cup of Red Sea Reef Pro in.

Too bad the economics of delivering seem to not make sense at lower volumes. Finding room to store hundreds of gallons of water, and not be an eye-sore, is difficult.
 
richiev said:
This is useful data. Given the salinity is slightly lower than folks tend to run, and saltwater is going to be very consistent with its parameters, it seems if people wanted higher alk then putting a bit of your favorite high-dKh salt in would be the easiest way to boost numbers. Eg toss a cup of Red Sea Reef Pro in.

Too bad the economics of delivering seem to not make sense at lower volumes. Finding room to store hundreds of gallons of water, and not be an eye-sore, is difficult.
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Or dose Kalkwasser!!!!!
 
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