什么是微量元素,它们在我们的礁石水族馆中扮演什么角色?简而言之,痕量元素是盐水中出现很少数量的元素。它们对于各种生物学过程至关重要,由于我们的水族馆大小有限,可以迅速耗尽。痕量元素可以通过regular water changesor with chemical additives, but before you run out and start dosing trace elements, it is important to realize just how scarce they are in our reef systems.
To kick off this discussion, let’s take a look at the composition of salt water. Saltwater with a specific gravity of 1.025 is 96.5% water. “Sea salts” make up the remaining 3.5%. That 3.5% salt is made up of major elements and trace elements. The major elements are sodium, chloride, sulfate, magnesium, potassium, and calcium. Those major elements comprise the vast majority of “sea salts.”
If you were to remove those major elements from the mix, what is left is a whopping 0.7%. Those are our trace elements. In total, there are around 70 different trace elements and they all fit into that 0.7%.
Their proportions may make one believe that trace elements are insignificant, but that could not be further from the truth. These trace elements are vitally important to all sorts of biological processes that happen in our aquariums. In fact, too little or too much of any of them could cause serious problems.
Some trace elements, such as copper, are highly toxic when present in non-trace quantities. If you plan to add trace elements, make sure you are testing for them, especially considering the vanishingly small quantities they represent in our salt water.