So last night I noticed some of my purple algae was getting white spots. I read that supplementing the water could help boost the algae. I went to my LFS and bought a small bottle of Kent Essential Elements. The bottle claims to replace trace elements so I thought I would try it. Of course the instructions only tell you 1 teaspoon per 50 gallons... Mine is 10 gallons, jerks! So I grab my teaspoon and end up using about 4 drops. I buy an LED strip online (yay!) lights out and go to bed.

Today I wake up and my Blue Yellowtail Damsel is lighter than usual and it's gills are red. Not bright red but it's noticeable. It's swimming all over the place so clearly something is wrong it's usually behind a rock and peaking out. I read online their gills turn red when they have trouble breathing. I test my water and the tests are fine minus one item. Nitrate went from 0 to .20. I can only assume it was this trace element stuff since nothing else changed. I bought a gallon of RO water and did a 10% water change. The fish is back to normal nice and bright blue and levels are normal minus the nitrate still registers at .10. Salt is currently 32 gravity 1.024. Is this stuff that harmful? 4 drops in 10 gallons doesn't seem like much! I do 10% water changes weekly but this week had to do it 1 day early.

Funny enough I was reading the other day about a guy who did a big Calcium dose to his tank and his Foxface died (pretty sure it was a Foxface), but I believe giving a big dose can be bad several small doses are the way to go, I'm guessing also if big doses were safe then the bottle would have instructions on how to do this, I had a low Mag level in my tank a while back and the Mag I got said to not raise it by any more than 80 in a 24hour period.

Hmm makes sense, spread it out. Thanks for that

I forgot to add he used a Kent product also.

So after a couple of days of watching my fish I noticed it is dull every morning Apparently When the lights are off it gets dull. After about 3 -5 minutes of having the lights on it gets its color back. Annoying! I ended up reading a couple of articles about why they change color at night. I freaked out over nothing. Oh well live and learn. My freshwater fish never did this. Just glad it wasn't the essential elements.

i don't have much information about it
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