Something old, something new

Years ago, our club's president handed me a coral dip sample from Fauna Marin.  Turned out to be gold in a vial but I couldn't get more of it.  I remember it working so well, but I figured it must have been a one-time thing that picked up zero traction and never made it to market.  Fast forward a decade or more, I stumbled upon one of those vials in my massive aquarium-related stash of things. I was in cleaning-mode and threw out a lot of stuff that I'd been hoarding far too long, due to my "what if I need this some day?" mentality. Admittedly, I do that a lot.  And it has come in handy dozens of times, but at the same time the clutter gets pretty bad.

Two weeks ago I was speaking in Minnesota. Another speaker delved into water parameters and caught my attention when he got to Potassium.  Potassium was a big deal back when people were dosing the Zeovit line of products. I'd even bought a K test kit to see what my level was, but found it to be nearly impossible to read and shelved it... which I actually threw away last week.  That kit was ancient, thus useless. Back to the point the speaker made though, he said K should measure around 400ppm or so. I looked at my previous blog with my ICP Analysis report, which showed that the tank was measuring 340ppm -- considerably low. I made a mental note to focus on that. Later that evening I grabbed dinner with the speaker and we chatted about Potassium, where he strongly urged me to raise the level. He felt that it really helped with coral coloration. So it was something I probably needed to take care of...

Last weekend, I flew to Ft Myers, Florida to speak to SWFMAS. Afterwards I met up with the national rep for Fauna Marin, and she offered to take me to the warehouse. I asked about the old coral dip elixer even though I knew it was a long shot. Turns out they did bottle it up and had it in stock, as well as a newer recipe. So I got both bottles.  I also asked if they offered Potassium, which I'm hoping to start dosing -- as well as a test kit to measure my levels.  They had those as well. I got my goodies, and headed home. :)

I'm going to read up on the K product on the Fauna Marin website because I was told their instructions on their website is more detailed than what you can read on the bottle. The plan is to use a Kamoer x1 pump to automatically dose it daily. And finally, I need to try out their test kit and see how well it works.  

To be continued.