Raising Potassium (K)

[Mark-AMA]

Hi All. Can someone assist me. I have been using Zeovit products for about a year on a large reef tank and noticed some of my LPS corals dying. I decided to stop dosing KZ for a couple of weeks and the situation became even worse. Now I have started dosing once again and noticed that my Potassium level remains between 330 to 350ppm. I am using Pohl's K-Balance to raise it. 80ml daily for my tank system that is approx 8500 to 9000 liters approx.

[jacky]

First make sure your measurements are correct, and if so, you can increase the K-Balance dose/frequency (but keep the interval). Regarding your system, K-Balance Strong is a better choice, it can be your pocket list.

It sounds that the health of the coral is not very good, if you can, please fill in more detailed information about the tank, so that we can understand a lot, maybe we can help you. Be sure to keep the correct base Zeo (base 4) otherwise the nutrition goes up.

[Bugger]

Do you have any sps. Typically sps would be the first to show signs of stress threw RTN STN. How many corals are currently effected. Either something is very wrong or it was a coincidence that they all started dying together.
Personally I have had torch that is almost bulletproof. Elegance coral seems to be the more sensitive LPS what types of coral are effected in your tank.

[G.Alexander]

Hello Mark and welcome to ZeoVit.com !

From my experience I can tell that hystrix corals and plating montipora corals are the first corals which do show a negative response to lower K+ concentrations, LPS corals are the last ones which I would say do suffer from a lower concentrations.

Basically most SPS corals do speed down their growth massive and the tissue becomes thinner, not sure if those signs are present in your system already.

Please also cross check your K+ test result to make sure it is correct, some pictures might be helpful also.

G.Alexander

[Mark-AMA]

First make sure your measurements are correct, and if so, you can increase the K-Balance dose/frequency (but keep the interval). Regarding your system, K-Balance Strong is a better choice, it can be your pocket list.

It sounds that the health of the coral is not very good, if you can, please fill in more detailed information about the tank, so that we can understand a lot, maybe we can help you. Be sure to keep the correct base Zeo (base 4) otherwise the nutrition goes up.

Hello Jacky. I did not understand what you meant by Zeo (base 4). Please explain. In a panic we stopped all of the Zeovit as our torch and hammer corals do not seem to stop dying. With over a 100+ of them in the tank and they are dying.

[Mark-AMA]

Do you have any sps. Typically sps would be the first to show signs of stress threw RTN STN. How many corals are currently effected. Either something is very wrong or it was a coincidence that they all started dying together.
Personally I have had torch that is almost bulletproof. Elegance coral seems to be the more sensitive LPS what types of coral are effected in your tank.

Hi Bugger - When the tank was setup, we did not have the stock of Zeovit. We were only running the calcium reactor. Yes the tank has SPS, LPS and Softies. The tank thrived for almost 8 months running. The tank is actually 1.4 years running. After using the Zeovit products on the recommended dosages stated (not on a doser, but manually each day), we started to see color losses on the acropora and soon lost two large colonies. Soon the LPS (Torch and Hammers), stared showing signs of stress and tissue retraction. One morning after our weekend we found a few melting away and dying. Thats when we completely puled back and stopped dosing only to find more dying. We have made water changes to the system, changing 1000 liters twice a week. It has not helping. Potassium remains at 320 ppm, LPS keep dying. It is a disaster which is so disappointing.

[Mark-AMA]

Hello Mark and welcome to ZeoVit.com !

From my experience I can tell that hystrix corals and plating montipora corals are the first corals which do show a negative response to lower K+ concentrations, LPS corals are the last ones which I would say do suffer from a lower concentrations.

Basically most SPS corals do speed down their growth massive and the tissue becomes thinner, not sure if those signs are present in your system already.

Please also cross check your K+ test result to make sure it is correct, some pictures might be helpful also.

G.Alexander

Hi Alexander - We have few smaller montipora and only 1 small colony of hystrix. These are not affected by the dosing and maintain color and growing. Our potassium test result if just posted (320ppm). Even after dosing K-Balance for a week there is not change to the Potassium but more negative affects on corals.

[Mark-AMA]

Coming Sunday I will record a few images to show the dying/dead LPS corals. After 100% stop of using Zeovit, we have started using only ZeoStart 3, Amino Acid LPS and ZEofood 7 on a doser at 1 drop / 25 gals daily, dosed 4-6 times a day. Doser therefore rolls 1-2 secs on each small dose.

We have a second aquarium with a total volume of 12,000 liters. It was fairly new packed with over 800 colonies SPS, LPS and Softies corals. We did start to see negative affects on this aquarium as well and decided to immediately stop using Zeovit until we understand more of the chemicals being introduced into the water. I want to know what is actually harming the coral at the recommended dose rather than do good.

[Bugger]

Hi Mark AMA. I have kept sps for a long time now and have had my ups and downs. The truth is the only tiimes I have had success with corals is when I changed 50% of the water on a weekly basic. Even now my new I have been doing 0.875% daily water changes and my corals look extremely healthy. Stoping zeovit is a bad idea but I have seen others dos almost all zeovit products and have issues. After that they tried changing lots of water but it did not stop the die off.
Lack of fish
chemical imbalance
toxic water can all have negative impact on corals.
I used to live in the area of Reef Raft Canada and I would go in and many times the owner would be changing water daily to keep corals alive.

[G.Alexander]

Hello Mark, sorry to hear things where going so wrong however what you have subscribed is not normal and might have a reason which is with the leak of information difficult to find. If you do not mind please share some more information about the two systems and about the procedure you used to start ZeoVit including the dosing regimen. Those information would be necessary:

https://forum.zeovit.com/forum/gener...bout-your-tank

If I understand you correct both systems have shown the same issues immediately after starting ZeoVit while others systems which do not use ZeoVit are doing extremely well.

Because of the potassium level it is difficult to say why the level does not increase even after dosing a potassium supplement for one week. Just to give you a feeling, the potassium concentration in natural seawater is close to the calcium concentration. In such a big system you would need a lot of a saturated calcium supplement to increase the level a “similar” quantity would be necessary to increase the potassium level. Please also keep in mind that the potassium level needs to be increased slowly otherwise corals do respond negative. Which potassium supplement have you used and how often have you dosed it for how long at which net water volume of the system ?

Please also check the potassium level of the salt mix you use, if the concentration in the mix is already to low I would recommend you to use a different salt mix with a adequate level. There is some potassium consumption in such systems but usually not really heavy which can be easy balanced with a supplement, often it is also not necessary to dose potassium additional.

G.Alexander

[Mark-AMA]

Hi Mark AMA. I have kept sps for a long time now and have had my ups and downs. The truth is the only tiimes I have had success with corals is when I changed 50% of the water on a weekly basic. Even now my new I have been doing 0.875% daily water changes and my corals look extremely healthy. Stoping zeovit is a bad idea but I have seen others dos almost all zeovit products and have issues. After that they tried changing lots of water but it did not stop the die off.
Lack of fish
chemical imbalance
toxic water can all have negative impact on corals.
I used to live in the area of Reef Raft Canada and I would go in and many times the owner would be changing water daily to keep corals alive.

Hi Bugger - Changing 50% water on a weekly basis is not a feasible solution for me as the tank is 8000 liters. We are however doing a 1000 liter water change twice a week to dilute the chemicals dosed already. As of today, I have stopped using KZ as so many corals have died.

With regards to fish...there are approx 250 fish in the tank and they are just fine. In my 40 years in the marine hobby I have never lost so much life.

[Mark-AMA]

Hello Mark, sorry to hear things where going so wrong however what you have subscribed is not normal and might have a reason which is with the leak of information difficult to find. If you do not mind please share some more information about the two systems and about the procedure you used to start ZeoVit including the dosing regimen. Those information would be necessary:

https://forum.zeovit.com/forum/gener...bout-your-tank

If I understand you correct both systems have shown the same issues immediately after starting ZeoVit while others systems which do not use ZeoVit are doing extremely well.

Because of the potassium level it is difficult to say why the level does not increase even after dosing a potassium supplement for one week. Just to give you a feeling, the potassium concentration in natural seawater is close to the calcium concentration. In such a big system you would need a lot of a saturated calcium supplement to increase the level a “similar” quantity would be necessary to increase the potassium level. Please also keep in mind that the potassium level needs to be increased slowly otherwise corals do respond negative. Which potassium supplement have you used and how often have you dosed it for how long at which net water volume of the system ?

Please also check the potassium level of the salt mix you use, if the concentration in the mix is already to low I would recommend you to use a different salt mix with a adequate level. There is some potassium consumption in such systems but usually not really heavy which can be easy balanced with a supplement, often it is also not necessary to dose potassium additional.

G.Alexander

Hi Alexander. We have been using K-Balance to try to increase Potassium with no affect whatsoever. We use Zeovit salt mix. A fresh mix of KZ salt water is 320 ppm for Potassium which is already too low. We run DasTaCo calcium reactors on both systems...Today's reading on the system where death has most occured - Ca 480ppm, kH 8.7dkh, Mg 1400 ppm and salinity at 34ppt. Temp is always stable between 24-26degC.

Today we threw out probably 15 coral mixed between Goniopora and Ancora.

[G.Alexander]

Thank you for the additional information but more info would be necessary to find the problem, I would rule out the potassium level as the main reason.

Ca and KH are both to high, please let both levels drop slowly to the following levels:

Ca - 400 – 420 mg
KH – 6.5 – 7.5

Have you already cross check your potassium test or done a ICP test recently ?

Have you used K-Balance Standard or Strong, how often and how much have you dosed on which net water volume ?

G.Alexander

[NZ-Nick]

Good morning.

I have only seen similar issues occur after someone dipping corals in a chemical to remove flatworm and other.

The chemical they use was not rinse off properly and effected the rest of the tank. Corals melted and others slow die.

[jacky]

Can you fill in more information about tank so we can learn more. Activated carbon - don't know if you use, brand, amount/how