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

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

The closer we get to ULN NSW water levels, the more and more we find that super low Potassium levels leads to detrimental health problems with many corals (especially SPS). This was traditionally not the case back when our tanks struggled with NO3's and phosphates, but that's all changed over the past couple years with the surging popularity of probiotic methodologies. But I digress - you run ULN for any given length of time paying no heed to your potassium (using a lower grade salt, not dosing, etc) and your SPS starts to get pale and sickly. You bring the levels up to NSW and bam, everything flourishes again.

I agree that it is important, having as close to NSW values is very important, all I am saying is that with a good alround media that is dissolved into the tank you should have enough K.

on a side note if stores and such are pushing stuff to help get the perfect water levels why are they still telling you that you need over 400ppm of Ca? the average NSW for the world is 380 to 400 so why are people trying to get 450 when it is actually hard on the corals.. oh and there is research that shows that also. (Simplified version is that the coral has to expend more energy to remove the Ca from equilibrium in its cells to deposit it as a skeleton for new growth)

I won't say every store, as there are several good ones, but on average the job of a store is to sell stuff.. so if they can bring something to the fore front that wasn't realy looked at befor as it is one of thoes things that is general good, then heck theres a whole new sale on a line of chemicals and test kits. but like I said not all stores are like this and I am not implying that any one reading this is like this but rather just the way things are out there. If I owned a store whould I bing this in.. if it is going to sell hell ya. if it is going to sit on the shelf for ever nope, I can put something in that space that would actualy make money.

the problem I have with this K thing is generaly people who are hard core SPS are running massive amount of Ca reactor material, one of the most popular is Carb sea which is a ballanced media. so I could see on initial set up making sure everything is deicent then checking for K maybe every couple months.. and for the record for the last year my SPS take was running I did test for K twice.. it was a little over 400 each time. this is why I don't understand how it gets depleted on a sps tank running a Ca reactor. oh and I was running IO (the only salt I will use) and had zero phosphates and nitrates.

Steve