Paul, I'm not sure of the concentration of the mix i am using. I am still using the bottle of potasium silicate that Wayne made for me. I dose 5 drops per day to the sump in a high flow area. I plan to use the water glass when this runs out, but at only 5 drops per day, with a few weeks and months that i didn't use it, to see what the difference really was, it goes a long way. While the results are really subtle as far as keeping up with the effects i have been impressed so far. I did get a brown dusting on the sand before raising my flow, but none at all now. You can see obvious growth spirts in the clams when i was going back and forth on dosing. Almost twice the growth rate with the silicates. The corals also darken in color, not brown, but darker more bold color. I haven't seen any effects like having to scrape the glass more often at all. I still scrape once per week and can go 2 or 3 if i get lazy.
I also saw a huge difference in the pod population with and without dosing. My pods exploded with the dosing and dwindle a bit during the non dosing time.
I'm not the detail science minded kind of guy lol. I can barely keep up with my keys, muchless concentrations and levels lol, but i would say that someone along your line of work, could learn to control the silicate levels in thier system to keep just the right amount of diatom growth, and have some really outstanding results from it.
My system is a 30 gallon display with a 30 gallon sump, and i dose 5 drops per day. Wayne was dosing a 140 with a 30 sump, and was dosing 20 drops per day. The growth lines in his montiporas was amazing when he was dosing as oposed to not dosing. The plates would get a ridge and almost double in thickness when the dosing started.
One thing i can tell you for sure, is there has not been one bad effect at all, only good.