maintaining potassium --best method?

[David3147]

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?

 

[killer2001]

I set up a dosing pump for potassium in my tank when my ICP reports kept showing 370-380 range. Now I keep a stable 420 for K.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

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.

 

[David3147]

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).

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Ok, that makes more sense. lol

For dosing phosphate, I recommend food grade sodium phosphate (just not sodium tripolyphosphate).