There were an old commercial jingle that will ended with “because minor things mean a lot”. As we all know in this hobby that is a definite truism. Whether it's doing the little things that come up with a good tank go by good to great or noticing little changes while in the tank that indicate a dilemma may be arising, little things in terms of reef tank husbandry really can have a significant impact.

Among the places where there remains to be some debate are trace elements as there exists some question whether they have to be supplemented since lots of replaced just by very simple water changes and which ones ought to be supplied and how much. For those of us all that add them the belief is that we are doing so in an attempt to own the waters in the tanks be as shut chemically as natural seawater.

We try this with the belief that this will result in fast growth and brilliant pigmentation. Unfortunately, from what I could find usually there is only a little scientific study as to whether this can be indeed the case. By their very definition, trace elements are only obtainable in amounts that are barely measurable generally in most tanks. The best definition regarding these elements was that given by Spotte (1979) where he defined trace elements while those elements which will not contribute to the salinity associated with seawater.

Trace elements constitute the. 01% of seawater which is not taken up by means of chlorine, sodium, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, potassium, bromine, boron, fluorine and also strontium. The trace elements tend to be defined scientifically as having concentrations under 1. 0 mg/L.

Oddly enough, during my reading around the subject of elements along with trace elements in seawater in addition to their biological function, I did not get a grouping for what many of us would consider common elements in the terrestrial environment: Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon and Phosphate. That is we were holding not classified as also main elements or search for elements despite the role each of them play in biological functions. So the discussion of these elements will be left for the future discussion.

There are at the very least 24 elements in seawater which might be classified as trace elements and included in this are such elements as precious metal, silver, uranium, tungsten, direct and arsenic. But none these elements, along with almost all of the others have been found to possess any significant impact to the biological processes of the animals that individuals keep in out tanks.

So what we are worried with are the essential trace elements which have been found to be critical with the biological processes of the animals we keep. These essential trace elements with regard to our animals include Iodine, Molybdenum, Vanadium, Pennie, Copper, Cobalt, Manganese, In terms of iron, Selenium, and Zinc.

Before I discuss what all these elements does, I want to point out that despite how good the ocean is and how long it has been stable the concentrations, despite how relatively low they're, vary greatly and that variance is caused by a large number of factors.

They can vary by depth or location to the reef and vary through one ocean to the next together with from reef to reef inside the same ocean. (Spotte, 1979, Craggs pers comm). And this variance seriously isn't small as experts agree it is shown to be about 100 to 500% difference in some elements.
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