Potassium Supplement Alternatives for Zeo

[Gardiner]

I recently ran out of Pohl's K-Balance Strong, a Potassium supplement necessary for Zeo systems. The old bottle had a price tag of $69.99 :: attached to it, so I was not eager to buy another bottle. After scouring the boards on RC, and a few other sites I found some great info. Both Brightwell Aquatics(Potassion) and Warner Marine have come out with cheaper K+ supplements than K-Balance, but the cheapest I could find being used in tanks(with Randy's Blessing) was Now Foods Potassium Chloride from iHerb.com. One bottle from iHerb($3.76) has about 3 times as much Potassium as a bottle of Potassion($9.69). That comes out to be $.03 per gram vs. $.24 per gram. Korallen does not publish their K-Balance Strong info, so I have no idea how much K+ is in a bottle.

Potassium Supplement Calculator(Use Reef Calculator)
"KCl is 52.5% Potassium by weight, using this percentage and the dosing for anhydrous calcium chloride we are able to get a rough estimate for the amount of KCl to dose… just multiply the number given by the calculator for the anhydrous calcium chloride by .7 to find the amount of KCl to add." Remember this needs to be slowly added over many days, and not all at once. No more than 10ppm per day.

Notes
I use Reef Crystals which has a K+ level ~250ppm. So when I do my water changes I make sure to add enough K+ to bring it up to ~390ppm.
If you find your blue corals fading like I did your K+ might be low. Since I got my K+ levels back to NSW levels my colors are returning.


iHerb Potassium Chloride
Use Coupon Code NOL862 for $5.00 off

 

[Joel A]

i dose kent lugols solution into my tank, so it adds potassium to the water in the form of potassium iodide (at least in my understanding) while it also adds iodide and iodine...

however lugols dosing alone is probably not enough to significantly increase my potassium levels like pohl's K-Balance Strong is..

Just in the FWIW category i believe they also have a normal "K Balance" that is less concentrated... but if you can get the same stuff for a lot cheaper... than why not right?

Do you run a full zeovit system Gardiner? I'm going to be full zeo very soon... i know have everything that i need to do so... but i'm leaving for the weekend so i wont start it up until i get back...

 

[Gardiner]

i dose kent lugols solution into my tank, so it adds potassium to the water in the form of potassium iodide (at least in my understanding) while it also adds iodide and iodine...

however lugols dosing alone is probably not enough to significantly increase my potassium levels like pohl's K-Balance Strong is..

Just in the FWIW category i believe they also have a normal "K Balance" that is less concentrated... but if you can get the same stuff for a lot cheaper... than why not right?

Do you run a full zeovit system Gardiner? I'm going to be full zeo very soon... i know have everything that i need to do so... but i'm leaving for the weekend so i wont start it up until i get back...

Joel, you are correct. Lugol's does have some potassium, but not near enough to make a difference. You would probably wind up with a yellow tank of death if you used it alone to supplement K+.

Pohl's K-Balance Strong has 3x the amount of K+ than K-Balance. Both are very expensive.

I do run full Zeo, and I can tell you Potassium is important. Apparently the bacteria strip it out of the water, along with your water changes if you are using low K+ salts. In the last 2 months I really noticed colors fading, especially in my blue corals.

BTW The K+ test kits are not very accurate or easy to use. I really only use it to guesstimate my levels.

I do like Zeo, but some of their additives/media are super expensive. I try to find cheaper equivalents when I can.

 

[Joel A]

Joel, you are correct. Lugol's does have some potassium, but not near enough to make a difference. You would probably wind up with a yellow tank of death if you used it alone to supplement K+.

Pohl's K-Balance Strong has 3x the amount of K+ than K-Balance. Both are very expensive.

I do run full Zeo, and I can tell you Potassium is important. Apparently the bacteria strip it out of the water, along with your water changes if you are using low K+ salts. In the last 2 months I really noticed colors fading, especially in my blue corals.

BTW The K+ test kits are not very accurate or easy to use. I really only use it to guesstimate my levels.

I do like Zeo, but some of their additives/media are super expensive. I try to find cheaper equivalents when I can.

makes sense... i use tropic marin pro reef salt... according to all of the zeoheads and tests done on RC, it has a K+ of around 380, which is perfect for zeovit systems... hopefully that's all i need to supplement K+ levels...

i agree the additives are expensive... one thing i personally wonder is how the system would work if say vodka was substituted for zeostart, and MB7 from brightwell aquatics was substituted for zeobak... but i'm not gutsy enough to try that one...

 

[nicks387]

I have about four hundred gallons of water volume and am using the full zeo method and some of my corals have recently faded I know its the potassium as i have been using reef crystals too. I used the calculator in your link and used the anhydrous calcium chloride calculation to raise the k levels in my tank from say 220 to 390 seems like I would need like three bottles of that Now Foods Potassium Chloride. That cant be right. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Gardiner]

I have about four hundred gallons of water volume and am using the full zeo method and some of my corals have recently faded I know its the potassium as i have been using reef crystals too. I used the calculator in your link and used the anhydrous calcium chloride calculation to raise the k levels in my tank from say 220 to 390 seems like I would need like three bottles of that Now Foods Potassium Chloride. That cant be right. What am I doing wrong?

Plugging in 400G, 220 K+ going to 390 K+ gives me 715.7 grams. I multiply that by .7 to get 501 grams of supplement. There are 227 grams per bottle. So that would be 2.2 bottles.

Just be glad you do not have to buy the $110, 1000ml bottle of K-Balance Strong. Once you are around ~390 you just need to do a weekly maintenance dose, and raise the potassium of your newly mixed water. Colors return very quickly.

There are 227g per iHerb bottle(118g or 52% of the actual grams are Potassium).

When I do a 35 gallon water change with Reef Crystals(K+ =~250), I add 36 grams of the supplement.

 

[nicks387]

O.K thats what I got. I had not used any K additive so far so I didnt want to dump that much of any substance in my tank without making sure first, Thanks for saving me a fortune. How many days would you break up that dose into ?
Like a week seem O.K is would that be too much?

 

[Gardiner]

I believe the rule is 10ppm per day. So if you are at 220 that is around 2 weeks.

 

[nicks387]

Sounds good. Thanks

 

[nicks387]

Any idea what the other 42% is in the bottle of potassium?

 

[Gardiner]

The rest is chloride, just like calcium chloride. Randy gave it the stamp of approval.

 

[nicks387]

Nice...

 

[Greg Hiller]

I've never understood this potassium supplement stuff. Potassium chloride is one of the cheapest salts on earth. You can pick up 50 lb bags of sufficiently high purity stuff at Home Depot for next to nothing.

 

[Gardiner]

The iHerb stuff is USP grade. I will check out the HomeDepot salts when the season comes.

Potassium seems to especially effect Montipora growth, and SPS coloring. The Zeo method appears to strip it out of the water so it is well below NSW levels and needs to be supplemented. One theory is that there is an K ion exchange with the Zeolite media.

I do know that adding Potassium will make flowers more colorful.

 

[Greg Hiller]

>I will check out the HomeDepot salts when the season comes.<

I think that this stuff is used for water softeners so I think it's pretty much available year round.

 

[nicks387]

This stuff is 99.7% pure potassium and is $5.99 - $7.99 for a 40lb bag
http://www.epinions.com/content_143035436676

 

[Gardiner]

My father is a microbiologist, and also installs water softeners. He has the water softener salt in his garage. I will give him a call and check it out.

I remember he picks up his salt at Agway.

 

[Liam]

I just use coralife salt it has NSW potassium levels

 

[Gardiner]

Liam, do you get it locally? Is it expensive?

 

[Liam]

Liam, do you get it locally? Is it expensive?

its the same price as instant ocean.
Petsmart carries it,i usually get it from drsfostersmith,its only $8 to ship.
Some petsmarts will match fostersmith price.
The last batch i got was from Jays,he had the 300 gallon boxes for $54(salt special price)