Potassium testing and dosing in my 750XXL

[TX_Punisher]

Well, I finally decided to join the crowd especially since I want to grow out some nice sps pieces. After doing some reading on potassium I decided to pick up a test kit.

I found Amazon had a Salifert available, so a day later it was in my mailbox.

Having ran out of my Reef crystals last week I picked up a small bag of regular IO until I could switch over to the Red Sea blue bucket.

I tested today with the salifert and added 14 drops to get blue which shows 360ppm on salifert's scale. Within acceptable range but I'm shooting for a little higher.

IlL be using this thread to document especially when I swit to the blue bucket.

Im also interested in your potassium dosing calculators. If you have you you like and find accurate, please post here. I'll be dosing food grade potassium chloride fwiw.







Happy reefing.

 

[Larry L]

Originally I was shooting for natural sea water levels (400 ppm) and used to test weekly, but then began testing a lot less frequently because regular 5% weekly water changes (Red Sea Coral Pro) always kept things basically right around 400 ppm anyway. Lately I've been reading a lot about using elevated levels for better color, so I've been dosing Brightwell Potassion-P and shooting for my Salifert kit to change color after the first or second drop.

 

[TX_Punisher]

Great, Larry.

Have you seen any changes using elevated levels?

 

[Larry L]

Have you seen any changes using elevated levels?

Hard to say - my tank is doing pretty well right now and the colors look pretty good (knock on wood), but I am also having better luck lately keeping nitrates and phosphates in line too.

 

[TX_Punisher]

Have you seen any excessive or an increase in algae growth with raised K values?

 

[Scrubber_steve]

I use the salifert test kit. I calibrate it against NSW; its never quite accurate.
Usually salifert reads a bit higher than NSW.
But the main problem is the slaifert test result will diminish over a period of months & give a different reading.

I suggest making up a potassium calabration solution to use as a check against salifert over time.