Potassium!

Buzz1329

New member
Used to run Zeovit on my 180, but discontinued it a few months back. Still had a Salifert potassium kit on hand (purchased in 5/13 with expiration date 5/15). Did a test last week and got 230 reading. Aaack! Did a second reading, and got same result.

I was especially surprised because I had recently done a 50% water change (using IO salt) over three days for reasons unrelated to potassium.

Had a hard time believing potassium could be that low, but I had a bottle of ZeoVit (K Balance) potassium additive on hand and did triple daily doses for about a week. Also ordered a new Salifert test kit.

As of yesterday morning, K was up to 280 using old Salifert kit. But tested with new test kit today, K was at 400.

Should have waited for new kit, before trying to increase K levels, but surprised that K levels were "only" at 400 after dumping so much K additive to tank. Guess, either K levels prior to dosing were well below 400 or maybe K additive did not have much effect on K levels.

Go figure.
 
Hmm, hard to say what happened, other than a bad test kit. Did you try measuring some freshly-mixed saltwater?
 
I didn't see anything which indicated how much is in it, but like calcium or magnesium, it would take a substantial amount of additive to make a significant increase just because there is so much already in seawater.
 
Hmm, hard to say what happened, other than a bad test kit. Did you try measuring some freshly-mixed saltwater?

Of course not. That would have been too logical for me.

Re Randy's observation, like all its products, Zeovit does not provide a lot of info on contents of K Balance, other than:

"Potassium is a major element in sea water like Calcium, and is concentrated with ca. 390mg/L.K-Balance contains multiple potassium salts in high concentration. Our tests in several tanks have shown the benefits in color and growth after dosing a few days."

My experience has been that it had zero effect on color or growth after dosing a few days, but that's just me.

Anyways, I'll continue periodic potassium tests to make sure the most recent test with the new kit was not anomalous.

Thanks for your help.
 
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