wasp

I'll do you one for 50 bucks, although the bulb in it is 6,500k, will grow stuff but looks yellow. If you want to go new there's a few places but I'm not in my office at the moment so can't look it up. Someone else may chip in, otherwise I'll come back on it. But first you need to look at the whole concept of buying a 70 watter, obviously you have decided on this after some thought, however very similar money can get you a 150 watter if going new.

Feelers made some rock, if he doesn't chip in you could drop him a pm.

Did you find the answers to any of your questions Layton? Other than that I've used it I don't really know any more on the subject than you did, so would be interested in anything you have found. As would others. I'll be getting one of those test kits also, so that will be interesting.

What fish do you have?

Awesome Sharkey!!!!! An excellent result, and a good demonstration of the learning curve we all go through. Patience is a virtue, I bet you hardly saw the changes happening!

Layton I'll give you one thing, you are good at searching things out, in fact you enjoy it. You have asked a heckuva lot of questions in this thread, and I'd be interested in the answers to them myself, as would others. Howzabout you go searching it all out elsewhere, and report back, myself and others will be interested.

Didn't quote you out of context at all. Never have. I used the principles you stated in another thread, to assist you to answer your own questions in this one. The meaning of what you said is unchanged. Please don't get all defensive and turn this into another arguing thread. As previously stated, I have answered the question as fully as I can, I just don't have a lot of info. I wouldn't worry too much about KZ, some of the people I referred to did not even use the KZ potassium. I've already said why KZ developed the product, the answer is on page 1. Was there any research? obviously. What was it? No idea I don't work there. I don't know if you have an opinion or not. I'll agree that it would be useful to know what it is used for. That might be why KZ have put out a test kit for it As for the other questions in your post, I don't know the answers. I told you before I've answered you as fully as I can. I am not a walking dictionary on all things! :lol: Bottom line, I don't know what potassium does, how it works, and whatever. But dosing it as needed has been shown to give nice results. And you should know me by now, "If it works, I'll use it" :lol: .

Good article Chimera, I've seen it before. Funny how it's just common sense but often not really understood. Like advice being given that someone with nitrates through the roof should fix it by doing a series of 5% waterchanges! Yes True! I saw that advice offered.

Absolutely! All you are really asking your reactor to do is maintain correct levels. How about dosing manually to bring levels up to where you want them, then see if the reactor will maintain them? If it doesn't, THEN you will have to figure out how to tweak it some more.

Not much, just direct observations from several independent users. And that this should be factored in to your thinking. Potassium has been a very understudied element in aquarium water, and there is just not much info, especially laboratory study type info, about it in the context of aquaria. However, It has been said that direct observations from several independent users can be MORE reliable No idea, however as dosing it in tanks suffering a deficiency has produced good results in terms of colour & growth, my guess is that keeping correct levels is of benefit. Again, I personally have no idea. Cracker, who ran experiments to determine this, does not believe it is. Sorry I cannot provide the true scientific proof you no doubt expect me to provide, but as has been said, if your looking for true scientific proof then you will be sorely disappointed in this hobby. Often the best you will do is finding significant amounts of evidence. That's about as full an answer as I can give at this point, to me anyway, it's a case of "it works, so I'll use it".

Here is a graph of Potassium levels in NSW, against some of the more common ASW salts.

Got any spare T5 stuff laying around? I want to set up some 4 foot actinics.

No, it's not Brendan Balance! :lol: It's a new product just out, I'm told we will be the first in the world to get it

Selling it in May? This is May. Is it coming in the same shipment as the B balance? If so, drop me one of each please Brendan.

I hate plumbing! :lol:

Thanks Now I get it!!! Brain must be slowing down in my old age :roll: . The sailfin is still on holiday in another tank, he'll be going in in around a week or so.

Not quite sure about that particular model Tunze, but Tunze work on the theory that the water should not be completely "stripped", and as a result their skimmers do not remove as much as some other skimmers. The importer of both these skimmers is Reef, you could drop him a pm & ask for a frank opinion on both these skimmers. I'm not sure if he's still logging in to the forum though, if you don't hear back from him in say a couple of days, drop me a pm & I'll give you his contact details.

Looking much more matured than last time I saw it, very nice!

I'm in!

Not that I can see, which pic?

Here is a pic of the overflow & skimmer, the intake pipe of the skimmer has been extended to draw water from the bottom of the overflow, and when it leaves the skimmer it goes back into the main tank. The reason I did this was to get surface skimming, and also so that the zeovit reactor can be hidden inside the overflow, instead of an extra pump to circulate water through it, the flow from the top of the overflow down to the skimmer intake passes through it, I've put a baffle in the skimmer to ensure correct flow rate. There is also a space in the overflow for a bag of carbon should I wish to do this. The zeovit reactor is pictured below, it is made from a bit of drainpipe with a cap glued on the end, and lots of little holes drilled to allow water to flow through. In a non zeovit tank this could be used for carbon or whatever. The weakness in this system is that if tank water dropped too low the overflow would go dry & there would be damage to the skimmer pump. So a Tunze auto top off unit has been ordered to attempt to ensure this does not happen, and the tank is also run with water high enough it needs 4 days evaporation without top off for that to happen. That should be long enough for me to notice if anything fails.

Here's a thread on it in the zeovit forum http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php ... =k+balance

It's been discussed on RC, seems it is not always effective. Stop Parasites, as imported recently by Reef, is supposedly a better version of it. ( According to overseas chat site hearsay :lol: )

Can't do a night that's when i work, but pretty flexible during the day, just give me a bell if you're in the area 479 5446.

A few of us started dosing it a few months ago, and did notice some good results, most notably enhanced purple colour in sps. However I think many have since stopped dosing it. Cracker sent some water samples to a lab to be tested for it, and found that our NSW contains the correct amount. The reason Potassium dosing started is that almost all artificial salts are deficient in it, or at least lower than NSW levels, sometimes by a large margin. So overseas where most people use ASW, by the time the sps in the tank depleted the potassium further, levels of it could get very low. In these situations an improvement in both colour and growth were noticed if it was dosed. In light of this, Zeovit have put out a potassium supplement called K balance. I dose this myself with nice results, but only a very small amount is needed, and as myself and others are using NSW, the improvements have not been as marked as overseas.