Iodine dosing

CHOMPERS

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I worked out the dosage for iodine supplementing using Iodine Tincture or Tincture of Iodine (same thing). For a totally depleated system, you would use two drops per ten gallons of water (tank and sump) to get back up to the natural seawater level of .06 ppm.

You can use this same dosing amount if you have an over the counter pharmacy grade Lugals formula. The difference of Lugals Iodine and Tincture of Iodine is that the Lugals formula is water based and the Tincture is ethanol based.

Thanks to the crack heads, iodine is limited to 2.2% solutions in 1 oz. or less (it is used in crystal meth production). Anyway, this limits us mostly to Iodine Tincture since most medical Lugals formulas are now prescription only.
 

CHOMPERS

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By the way, systems with large amounts of macro algae, chaetomorphia, or hair algae will need heavy dosing of iodine. Algae and many soft corals consume lots of it. My tank is suffering from new tank syndrome and is plagued with brown and hair algae. It seems to deplete the iodine every two days (still need to verify this with more testing).
 

CHOMPERS

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One more BTW, I don't remember which site it was but there was some fear about using medical iodine for reef use. Regardless which site it was, it is universal on all sites for people to be paralyzed with fear of the unknown. Anyway, the fear came out of the carrier chemical in medical iodine and someone said that it would kill everything in the tank. This was unfounded speculation, and was based only on fear rather than facts.

Iodine tincture is ethanol based. The amount added per dose is far less than what is added for vodka dosed tanks. (Vodka dosing is a method used to control nitrates in reef tanks.)

Don't fear the unknown; learn about it and then conquer.
 
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