Chemistry
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Iron and Seagrasses |
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Adding Iodine To the Reef Tank Adding Iodine to your reef tank can be accomplished in several ways... |
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Iron: A Look at Organisms Other than Macroalgae In this article, I will review some of the pertinent scientific literature in this area, including one paper that has been suggested to show iron “toxicity” to a coral that many reefkeepers maintain... |
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Phosphorus: Algae’s Best Friend Phosphorus is one of the basic building blocks of living matter. It is present in every living creature, and in the water of every reef tank. Unfortunately, it is present in excess in many reef tanks... |
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Compound and Element Reactions |
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Reef Aquaria with Low Soluble Metals Ron Shimek showed that two salt mixes and natural seawater were more conducive to the development of sea urchin embryos than were two other salt mixes and the water from two reef aquaria using one of them. In that article, Shimek suggested that elevated metal levels, such as copper, could have been responsible... |
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Oxygen Saturation That depends on the exact salinity and temperature of your aquarium -- the table below gives you the values of oxygen saturation (mg/l)... |
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Strontium and the Reef Aquarium ome authors have described it as an important additive,1 while others have described it simply as a poison... |
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What is a Trace Element and Why Should You Care About Them? The question posed in the title of this talk is double edged. While I will do my best to provide answers to the questions above, I'm also gently poking a bit of fun at aquarists who speak about how trace elements are or are not depleted by various practices... |
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Magnesium: Calcium's little sister Magnesium is an interesting atom that has tremendous biological and chemical relevance to reef tanks. Fortunately for reefkeepers, it is present in abundance in seawater and is depleted only slowly... |
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Magnesium in Reef Aquaria Magnesium is the third most abundant ion in seawater, behind sodium and chloride. It is also intimately involved in a great many biological processes in every living organism... |
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Magnesium Ion Precipitation in Reef Aquaria It has been stated that dosing limewater causes the loss of significant amounts of magnesium ions from reef aquaria. The supposed mechanism for this loss is through the formation of magnesium hydroxides... |
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Aluminum in the Reef Aquarium Aluminum is an ion that doesn’t get much discussion in reefkeeping circles. It has little in the way of positive biological functions... |
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Silica in reef aquariums Silica is a chemical that is feared by many reef keepers. Visions of a reef tank covered with diatoms so thick that you can’t see through the glass come to mind... |
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Boron in a Reef Tank The importance of boron in marine aquaria is a subject that is not often discussed by hobbyists, despite the fact that many people dose it every day as part of their alkalinity supplements... |
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Redox; Reduction-Oxidation Potential, ORP Re-Dox (Re as in "real", Dox as in wiener dogs) like pH, can give valuable insight as to change in the suitability of your water, particularly with "reef set-ups" whose organisms are more Redox sensitive... |
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Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe? Carbon dioxide is an extraordinarily important molecule for reefkeepers. No, not just because global warming due to atmospheric CO2 may impact natural reefs, but because it has a huge impact on the processes taking place in a reef tank... |
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Carbon Dioxide Tests For The Marine Aquarium Several times over the last several months, a newcomer to the reef aquarium hobby has asked the Internet Reef newsgroups whether or not he or she should obtain a carbon dioxide test kit for their new aquarium... |
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Some Chemistry Behind Ca(OH)2 and CaCO3/CO2 Reactors There is a deep underlying reason why the two "best" ways of maintaining clacium and alkalinity in reef tanks have such drastically different pH's... |
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Ionic Imbalance Ok, can you explain "ionic imbalance"??? ... |
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Metals In Limewater Ron Shimek recently showed that two salt mixes and natural seawater were more conducive to the development of sea urchin embryos than were two other salt mixes... |
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Solving Calcium and Alkalinity Problems For many reefkeepers, correcting undesirable calcium1 and alkalinity2 values can be among the most vexing of the chemical problems encountered in maintaining a reef tank... |
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Calcium Carbonate as a Supplement The primary supplements needed on all reef tanks are calcium and alkalinity. These are required because corals and other organisms consume them to form calcium carbonate skeletons... |
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