Potassium Hydroxide Dosing??

[Lionfish hunter]

Now I will tell you the reason I am making such a big deal about this. It is not to make anybody look bad. His method is very dangerous under the right circumstance. His entire method is based around dosing alk to your evaporation rate and only using ph to stop dosing. He says dose until a ph of 8.3 is achieved and have the apex shut down at 8.3. He says do not look at alkalinity and that it is okay if your alk rises to any level because it will eventually fall. he even says something like a dkh of 20 could happen and is fine.

Now lets look at what happens when a beginner with 2 or 3 corals does this method. They only look at ph per the methods guidelines. Lets say this beginner has a high evaporation rate and high co2. I’ll tell you what happens. Kalk is continually dosed for weeks with nothing uptaking the calcium and alkalinity. The alk goes up to 35 dkh and the calcium goes up to 600 ppm. It would only take 44 gallons of kalk to achieve these numbers on a 200 gallon aquarium with no consumption. Wouldn’t take that long, less than a month. A legitimate disaster caused by bad information. And many people are listening to him, look at the views and comments on the videos about this method.

 

[HuduVudu]

There is little an ordinary reefer can do to defend against seemingly good sounding ideas that just aren't.

I don't agree with this. Everyone needs to tune the bullish meter.

This skill alone has served me so well in purchasing things not just in this industry but others. The funny thing is that I let my meter down some when I am looking for products for aquariums. I have so much experience I forget the universal tells that protect me from garbage, and my gawd it comes at you from every which way.

I called this guy out long ago. There are some universal tells across the board that warn people to move on, if only they will see them.

 

[HuduVudu]

His method is very dangerous under the right circumstance.

People do incredibly dangerous things all of the time. People do really cruel and stupid things with their salt water aquarium inhabitants all of the time. Call it out and then move on. Just know you may be wrong and if you force something ugly ...

If you go with this line of thinking you will create a monster much worse than the one you are trying vanquish. Be warned.

 

[HuduVudu]

EDIT: Never mind.

 

[Shooter6]

Odd that anyone would claim calcium would decline. I don’t see how it can by dosing calcium hydroxide. No matter how high you drive alk or how much precipitation of calcium carbonate you get, calcium cannot decline if alk is equal or higher than where you started.

Much more likely is that calcium climbs substantially in both the short term (matching the alk rise) and long term (from magnesium and strontium getting into deposited calcium carbonate in place of some of the calcium).

I believe from watching the videos he's made theres some confusion on what he said. No I'm in no way defending his statements but I do believe there's some mixup here.

When he was speaking about calcium dropping but alk increasing, that was when he was talking about the potassium hydroxide dosing that he does. Not kalkwasser dosing.

He does talk about dosing kalkwasser during lights out, to match daily evaporation, and controlling it via apex and ph monitoring. My understanding is that he has programed a max ph and a dosing schedule during the night. The doser is allowed to run the schedule unless ph increases above the set max. If the ph doesn't drop then the doser cannot run .

Hope this clears up some of the misunderstanding I believe is happening.

 

[Lionfish hunter]

I believe from watching the videos he's made theres some confusion on what he said. No I'm in no way defending his statements but I do believe there's some mixup here.

When he was speaking about calcium dropping but alk increasing, that was when he was talking about the potassium hydroxide dosing that he does. Not kalkwasser dosing.

He does talk about dosing kalkwasser during lights out, to match daily evaporation, and controlling it via apex and ph monitoring. My understanding is that he has programed a max ph and a dosing schedule during the night. The doser is allowed to run the schedule unless ph increases above the set max. If the ph doesn't drop then the doser cannot run .

Hope this clears up some of the misunderstanding I believe is happening.

Lets assume it was a mix up with potassium hydroxide. Dumping in potassium hydroxide day after day would put potassium levels so high it would eventually kill all the corals. I think the far more likely scenario is that he can dump in all the kalk he wants because he is a coral farmer and he has a ton of consumption to uptake the added calcium and alkalinity. And he doesn’t understand what he is talking about when he tells everbody else to do what he does. He has the chemistry wrong and doesn’t understand why this wouldn’t work for people with low consumption. This isn’t the first bad advice he has given either. Go to page 1 of this thread which is about bad advice he gave 2 years ago on a different topic. Ironically that topic is potassium hydroxide.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

When he was speaking about calcium dropping but alk increasing, that was when he was talking about the potassium hydroxide dosing that he does. Not kalkwasser dosing.

He does talk about dosing kalkwasser during lights out, to match daily evaporation, and controlling it via apex and ph monitoring. My understanding is that he has programed a max ph and a dosing schedule during the night. The doser is allowed to run the schedule unless ph increases above the set max. If the ph doesn't drop then the doser cannot run .

Hope this clears up some of the misunderstanding I believe is happening.

Nonsense. There is zero misunderstanding on our part.

If there is a mix-up, he was making it and he expanded on the "reasons" why it is true (despite being a bogus statement).

Read exactly what he wrote that was posted above. Does that seem like he was referring to potassium hydroxide? Of course not.

 

[Lionfish hunter]

Odd that anyone would claim calcium would decline. I don’t see how it can by dosing calcium hydroxide. No matter how high you drive alk or how much precipitation of calcium carbonate you get, calcium cannot decline if alk is equal or higher than where you started.

Much more likely is that calcium climbs substantially in both the short term (matching the alk rise) and long term (from magnesium and strontium getting into deposited calcium carbonate in place of some of the calcium).

@Randy Holmes-Farley The ACI guy said in his video that he is very concerned with co2 entering the dry kalk powder. So he double bags his kalk bags and then puts them in 2 sealed buckets. Is there any concern to co2 entering a kalk bag and lowering the potency because the bags isn’t 100% sealed. This seems wrong to me but I do not know.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

@Randy Holmes-Farley The ACI guy said in his video that he is very concerned with co2 entering the dry kalk powder. So he double bags his kalk bags and then puts them in 2 sealed buckets. Is there any concern to co2 entering a kalk bag and lowering the potency because the bags isn’t 100% sealed. This seems wrong to me but I do not know.

Yes, CO2 can react with calcium hydroxide powder, and will do so faster with moisture. It can also happen once dissolved. It forms useless calcium carbonate. It's best to keep it sealed.

That said, if you are dosing from a settled reservoir (my recommended method), it just means you need to add more solids than usual and will get more than usual undissolved material on the bottom.

My kalkwasser Brute cans collected an inch thick layer of white mud over years of use.

 

[Lionfish hunter]

Yes, CO2 can react with calcium hydroxide powder, and will do so faster with moisture. It can also happen once dissolved. It forms useless calcium carbonate. It's best to keep it sealed.

That said, if you are dosing from a settled reservoir (my recommended method), it just means you need to add more solids than usual and will get more than usual undissolved material on the bottom.

My kalkwasser Brute cans collected an inch thick layer of white mud over years of use.

Okay that was my next question.
I have had problems in the past with saturated lime water losing a lot of potency after a week or 2. In a 20 gallon bin with a lid. Just the lids that snap on without much of a seal.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Okay that was my next question.
I have had problems in the past with saturated lime water losing a lot of potency after a week or 2. In a 20 gallon bin with a lid. Just the lids that snap on without much of a seal.

If stirring, it may deplete a lot faster than if unstirred. In my Brute can with an ordinary Brute lid, there was no detectable depletion based on conductivity in a few weeks.

I show that here:

The Degradation of Limewater in Air - Reefkeeping.com

 

[Shooter6]

Nonsense. There is zero misunderstanding on our part.

If there is a mix-up, he was making it and he expanded on the "reasons" why it is true (despite being a bogus statement).

Read exactly what he wrote that was posted above. Does that seem like he was referring to potassium hydroxide? Of course not.

I already discussed this with you on the other post, but I'll address it here as well due to the tone of the response.

As I stated in my post I was not defending his claims, and knew nothing of the linked writings you attached. I was speaking about the videos which were alluded to by another poster then you. If you watched the videos alluded to, he does speak about the alk/calcium differences, but that video was in regards to the potassium hydroxide dosing. I know very little about that and won't try to pretend to, but am interested in it never the less.

The video he made today with melves reef, he went into the kalk dosing method he uses. I've not finished watching it, ( I'm at about the 58m mark of a 1.40hr vid. So far he has not said anything about calcium dropping and alkalinity raising from kalk dosing.

So there is no nonsense here, instead there was an attempt to clarify some things in regards to the 2 videos being talked about.

 

[brmc1985]

It is so sad (IMO) that this is getting such publicity.

There is zero reason to use potassium hydroxide.

Food and other high grades of sodium hydroxide are better choices for a high pH alkalinity supplement, without concerns about excessive potassium.

If you need potassium, using cheap food grade potassium chloride will allow far better control than to try to tie alkalinity dosing and potassium supplementing together.

Isn’t potassium hydroxide pretty caustic as well and you can nuke a tank very easily with the wrong measurements or wrong dose?

 

[brmc1985]

Nonsense. I don’t know what he is trying to do, but he is spouting misinformation that is detrimental to anyone who believes and acts on false information.

Do you not care that what he says is simply wrong?

it’s not a difference of opinion or scale. It’s truth vs untruth. That should matter, IMO.

He also never directly discusses EVERYTHING else he doses. Chris does have an agenda because he is in collaboration with a couple other companies as he publicly says. He briefly mentions that the kalk he uses is FROM A PERSON WHO HE IS IN BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH.

 

[Shooter6]

Isn’t potassium hydroxide pretty caustic as well and you can nuke a tank very easily with the wrong measurements or wrong dose?

Definitely

 

[Lionfish hunter]

I already discussed this with you on the other post, but I'll address it here as well due to the tone of the response.

As I stated in my post I was not defending his claims, and knew nothing of the linked writings you attached. I was speaking about the videos which were alluded to by another poster then you. If you watched the videos alluded to, he does speak about the alk/calcium differences, but that video was in regards to the potassium hydroxide dosing. I know very little about that and won't try to pretend to, but am interested in it never the less.

The video he made today with melves reef, he went into the kalk dosing method he uses. I've not finished watching it, ( I'm at about the 58m mark of a 1.40hr vid. So far he has not said anything about calcium dropping and alkalinity raising from kalk dosing.

So there is no nonsense here, instead there was an attempt to clarify some things in regards to the 2 videos being talked about.

He did say in the video I made this post about that calcium will drop and alk will rise while dosing kalk. Then he commented on my comment saying there was no misunderstanding and he ment what he said in the video. It is a video he made on how to use his kalk method. I don't think I can post a link on here but the title is how to dose kalkwasser - aci method on youtube.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

He did say in the video I made this post about that calcium will drop and alk will rise while dosing kalk. Then he commented on my comment saying there was no misunderstanding and he ment what he said in the video. It is a video he made on how to use his kalk method. I don't think I can post a link on here but the title is how to dose kalkwasser - aci method on youtube.

You are allowed to post links, if that's what you mean.

I'm not a fan of potassium hydroxide dosing, due to rising potassium, but sodium hydroxide is a fine way to make a very high pH alk additive, and I have a two part recipe from it.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

FYI, I got an email response from Chris at ACI. He seems to have some misunderstanding of what I have said and think (not sure if he even read my whole email), and I asked for a clarification of whether he stands by his comment that kalkwasser is not balanced because it contains one calcium and two hydroxides.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I followed up my second email to them with a third that gives some possible scenarios that might cause calcium to decline when using kalkwasser when by itself, calcium should rise. Perhaps we can figure out why he observed what he did (calcium decline):


Here are some possibilities:

1. Dosing nitrate in any form adds alkalinity when it is consumed.
2. Dosing phosphate in some forms adds alkalinity (though typically much less than dosing nitrate)
3. Dosing amino acids may add alkalinity
4. Dosing silicate will add alkalinity
5. Replacing evaporation with tap water or other source water that contains alkalinity
6. Doing water changes with a mix that has relatively higher alk than calcium EVEN IF the water change water has higher calcium than the tank water. For example, if the new salt water is 430 ppm calcium and 11 dKH, and the tank is 420 ppm calcium and 7 dKH, water changes will tend to deplete calcium if alk is maintained.
7. Slow dissolution of substrate that contains a substantial amount of magnesium in the calcium carbonate, relative to the demand by corals, will tend to lower calcium if alk is maintained.
8. Slow release of alkalinity for artificial rock (cement) can boost alk and that may deplete calcium if alk is maintained.

 

[Shooter6]

He did say in the video I made this post about that calcium will drop and alk will rise while dosing kalk. Then he commented on my comment saying there was no misunderstanding and he ment what he said in the video. It is a video he made on how to use his kalk method. I don't think I can post a link on here but the title is how to dose kalkwasser - aci method on youtube.

Ic thank you for that. I'll look it up. I know he said that when he started dosing the potassium hydroxide, his alk shot up and calcium dropped but then leveled out to the point he temporarily disconnected his calcium reactors. That was the conversation he had with the Reef dudes on youtube if memory serves me. I can find that video if you have not already seen it.

I wonder if he was maintaining an elevated calcium with previous dosing methods. Say 450 with an alk of 8.2. Then when he implemented kalkwasser and backed down from previous methods he saw calcium drop to say 410 with the same 8.2 alkalinity. That could be the cause of the drop he spoke of and either didn't realize it or misunderstood the correlation.