maintaining potassium --best method?

David3147

Active Member
View Badges
Joined
Apr 16, 2023
Messages
125
Reaction score
71
Location
Pasadena, CA
Rating - 100%
2   0   0
Try to think of best way to maintain potassium (and trouble shoot if needed). Tank is roughly 200g, started with live ocean rock, Ca/Kh via all-for-reef, 1 year old tank, no fuge, and K (and NO4) keep bottoming out. I've been adding about 20 mL of brightwells K and about 15 mL NO3 daily via manual dosing. This raises it to about 0.01-0.04 (hannah) and if I skip a day, it will go to zero. Overfeeding didn't help, it just caused cyano and algae bloom --so prefer to add the elements themselves.

1) does this seem odd?

2) do people set dosing up dosing pumps for K / NO3?

3) "best" supplement for K daily?

Am I going about this correctly?
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

Reef Chemist
View Badges
Joined
Sep 5, 2014
Messages
67,516
Reaction score
63,963
Location
Arlington, Massachusetts, United States
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Potassium does not always deplete at all. If it does it is usually very slow and does not need a dosing pump, IMO.

What do you mean by it bottoming out? How are you testing it?

I never needed to dose potassium, but food grade potassium chloride from Now foods is what I would use.
 
OP
OP
D

David3147

Active Member
View Badges
Joined
Apr 16, 2023
Messages
125
Reaction score
71
Location
Pasadena, CA
Rating - 100%
2   0   0
Potassium does not always deplete at all. If it does it is usually very slow and does not need a dosing pump, IMO.

What do you mean by it bottoming out? How are you testing it?

I never needed to dose potassium, but food grade potassium chloride from Now foods is what I would use.

HUGE TYPO on my end. I meant phosphate (PhO4) ....not potassium (K).

By bottoming out, I mean: Using Hannah checker PhO4 ULR it will read 0.00. I then add 20 mL of Brightwell's NeoPhos and test a couple hours late to bring it up to 0.06 ppm. Then next day, it's back to 0 ppm. (Ditto N04; this too, gets low very fast).
 

When to mix up fish meal: When was the last time you tried a different brand of food for your reef?

  • I regularly change the food that I feed to the tank.

    Votes: 44 21.6%
  • I occasionally change the food that I feed to the tank.

    Votes: 71 34.8%
  • I rarely change the food that I feed to the tank.

    Votes: 66 32.4%
  • I never change the food that I feed to the tank.

    Votes: 19 9.3%
  • Other.

    Votes: 4 2.0%
Back
Top