is Potassium required for reef???? Help??

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by mandarin man

Thank you guys for helping me. I am new to this amazing hobby and I am trying to learn as much as I can.

I bought the KZ potassium test kit, tested the water and it is almost impossible to see the results without placing the test vial underneath the sun light or a very very bright light. It came out to be approximately 250mg/l to 275mg/l. Any one experiences with this test kit and have a better way of testing this? Am I doing it correctly by placing it under the sun?

I also bought reef pure potassium and started dosing it slowly. Let's see what happen

Thanks

I find placing it under the brightest light source possible is the way to go. I test in my bathroom, plenty of light in there It is a fairly frustrating test kit to read though.

Definitely dose slowly and keep an eye on your potassium levels. Once you see it hit 380 or so (as sphelps says, the higher the K+ the harder the kit is to read) level off and see how your tank does after a week of no dosing, then you can aim for a weekly dosing rate (or try whatever it says on the bottle, some are weekly dosing, some are daily).

I think once you get your dosing closer to NSW you'll find you'll get a bit better coloration out of your corals. I was running the full zeo system and quit cold turkey. Lately I have been working on my potassium levels back on track and things are coloring up nicely.