Does anyone dose potassium? If so how do you do it and what do you use? I mix my own alk, mag, and calcium using the aquaforest products and their online instruction on how to mix them. But I CANNOT keep my potassium over 300ppm. It stays around 290ppm. I use brightwell aquatics potassium to try and supplement but I think it's not very good. I do a 5% water change every week and add 15ml of the potassium to the water change which brings the potassium level in the new water to 430 ppm. Then it goes into my tank and gets absorbed like nothing. I have a 100 gallon system with all sps. Sps are surviving but could certainly be growing faster and more colorful. It's my low potassium and nutrient levels causing this I am sure
Dosing potassium
- Thread starter Mrcote1
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If you are testing for it, then dose it. You can dose it every day if you don't do too much.
sghera64
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I do. I bought a 25 pound of potassium based water softener salt (KCl instead of NaCl). I just do the math to dose my tank.
I was trying for 300-400 but like you, my ICP-OES comes back less than 300ppm. I’ve read that it really brings out the greens in DPS. I have to admit, it does “light up” my Bali Slimers. My dose rate is/was supposed to increase my Potassium ppm by 10ppm per week. But something is out pacing my effort. Oh well.
Are you using a separate container for dosing? I hate hand dosing and I have a 4 channel doser. I am mainly wondering if I can throw in potassium chloride in one of my dosing reservoirs with either my alkalinity, magnesium, calcium or acropower. I dont want to buy another doser for just potassium
sghera64
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I was using a dedicated channel. But as it is a chloride salt, you could add it in with one of the others. It should not cause precipitation with the ones you mentioned unless they were near saturation. Since you don’t need to add a lot of magnesium, I would lean towards making a dilute MgCl and dilute KCl combined solution. The trick is getting the concentrations right so that the routine amount you dose does it over do it in either Mg or K.
Well I dose 30ml a day from my magnesium reservoir. It is a one liter reservoir. So if I add 100ml of brightwell aquatics potassium and a little more mg to the container i should be dosing about 3ml a day of the potassium. So that is not exactly ideal so I'll look into something more concentrated. As long as putting it in with the mg doesn't mess anything up that would make me very happy
badonkadonk
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I finally got around to testing my potassium (Salifert) a few months ago and was surprised to find it so low (290). I checked my test kit w freshly mixed saltwater (leftover Red Sea CP), which came in at 400 so the issue was not with the test kit. I'd recently switched to Instant Ocean regular (purple box) which is known to have lower levels of certain important elements, so that likely had something to do with my low K. My magnesium also tends to drop faster than Ca. Besides the lower levels in regular IO, I also have a huge clump of chaeto in my sump that I had on a 24 hour photoperiod. To raise K, I dosed using Potassion (Brightwell?), used up all the powder, and once I found out it was only KCl, I simply ordered KCl on eBay, and dose with that. I use one of the online calculators for potassium (ultimatereef) and mix the amount of salt I need into a smallish amount of DI water, then dose about 10 ppm per day with that (my K was at 380 just today). Since I started dosing potassium (and trimmed back my chaeto to a much smaller amount, and went to a 12 hour photoperiod), my potassium has been fairly stable, and my sps has had much better polyp extension than I've seen before.
Most check alk and calcium (less often if you are lucky enough to hit cruise control mode in your reef), but mag and potassium may also be important if you have sps.
Most check alk and calcium (less often if you are lucky enough to hit cruise control mode in your reef), but mag and potassium may also be important if you have sps.
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