Test your potassium? (Zeovit users in particular)

[Delphinus]

I went and bought the Korallen-Zucht Kalium potassium kit today.

So I've already encountered a frustration. You're supposed to look through the opaque liquid, and the point where you can't see the colour anymore on the test strip tells you the potassium concentration ...

What if the liquid is completely opaque? I might as well been looking though skim milk. Does that mean my potassium is 400 or higher? That seems implausible seeing as I've never dosed or done anything about potassium before.

Any hints from the zeoheads here?

[Joe Reefer]

Hey Tony, I was having the same problem reading this test kit. (lots of light in the room helps a ton) It took 2 weeks dosing 6ml of k-balance daily to bring it up from 305mg/L. The picture is what 370-380 looks like. Hope it helps.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y4/lyohemas/120%20gallon/IMG059.jpg

[Jason McK]

Tony I've been testing K for almost 2 years and share your frustration. It's a very poor test kit. But I assume it is not an easy thing to test for.

J

[digital-audiophile]

I have not started testing for it yet, I'm still not not convinced that it is 100% required IMO.

[Jason McK]

Aside from Amino Acid I would say Potassium is the number 1 improvment I've seen in my tank. As it was at around 250 when I started once it got to the 300 - 400 range I noticed large colour improvments

J

[Joe Reefer]

I have not started testing for it yet, I'm still not not convinced that it is 100% required IMO.

I disagree. Have you tested your K level yet?

[digital-audiophile]

I have not, hence why I'm not 100% convinced :p

I need to swallow the cost of the test kit first.

[Delphinus]

Thanks guys, yeah, I assume it's just a hard thing to get a quantifiable reaction on. The test kits that I have the least frustration with are those that involve a titration. I hate anything that requires me to guess a colour and compare it to a chart, apparently I'm colour blind.

Lando, how much ambient light was there in that picture? I was trying to do this at midnight last night, I guess that's not going to work out too well, I'll try doing it at high noon (and upstairs where there are windows) and try again.

I can just make out the colour strip in your picture. It feels like I'm going to be guessing an awful lot about with this one, although maybe with practise it will be easier to start getting some reasonably consistent readings.

[Delphinus]

I hear ya Greg. I'm more stuck on the cost of the K-Strong or whatever. I imagine a bottle will last forever though so once bought it should be OK.

My most recent frustration with test kits involve Magnesium though. I started getting really frustrated that no matter how much Mg supplement I was adding to my makeup water, it would only go up a tiny tiny little bit. 900. Dump Mg. 905. Dump a whole lot of Mg. 910. Go buy more Mg. Dump it in. 905. "What the ...". So I went and bought an Elos test kit (I was using Salifert). 1300. 1300! That's quite a discrepancy. I've never gotten bad readings before from Salifert though so now I'm sort of stuck on who do I believe, $30 per each test kit and such wildly different results between the two. :neutral:

I think I can produce a rant about just about any test kit or electronic tester that I've ever used to test any parameter. I didn't think I was "one of THOSE people" but maybe I am. You know the type. Usually it's a parent or an inlaw where you're like "For the love of GOD please don't touch my computer!! ... Or my stereo. ... Or.. um .. my TV. Or my phone." (because everytime they do it takes you weeks to get it fixed back up to where you had it before). Other people can come along and press every button and things are fine, but these folks touch one button and poof, virus, or poof, all your emails are gone ... (and all they touched was your phone .. how on earth did you DO that?? "I dunno I just pressed on, I swear!"). I seem to be that person with test kits.

[Snappy]

I dose with potassium and :redface: I don't test but my corals seem to be telling me their ok.

[Joe Reefer]

I test in my fish room it has a 4ft flourencent light over head and the picture was taken with the no flash. This is hardest test kit I have used thus far. (lots of re-tests have been made.)