Potassium permanganate to raise redox

[michaeldaly]

I know that use this was in the past as an alternative to ozone. Has anybody got experience in doing this and what the correct dosages would be? Is doing this without a redox monitor safe?

[unhpian]

As a reefer and a environmental engineer, I'll never understand this obsession with redox. Redox is just a indicator of overall water quality - specifically which terminal electron acceptors are being used by microbial processes. You can do lots of things to water to increase the redox readings (ozone, chlorine, potassium permanganate)...but I have to go back to Why? You are much better off addressing the underlying reason WHY your redox is low, rather than adding an oxidizer to chemically adjust it. Potassium Permanganate will surely do it ....but, I will tell you - one of the longest and toughest battles i've waged as an environmental engineer was over the use of potassium permanganate to precipiatate manganese in a drinking water plant - and it ended up being removed from the design over health concerns - and I just have to laugh to myself that its being used in our "ultra-sensitive" reefs to raise the redox just for the sake of a higher redox value.

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I would strongly recommend against this.

As alluded to above, and reiterated in the articles below, high ORP is not the goal of ozone. Water with less yellow color to it is (or should be) the goal (and probably the only one we usefully attain on most reef tanks). IMO, the benefit of chemically raised ORP as a goal is unsupported by any data that I am aware of. All ORP is is a measure of the relative concentrations of certain more oxidized chemicals to their less oxidized forms (like Fe++ vs Fe+++). No one has demonstrated that the forms available at higher ORP from chemical oxidation are any better than the forms present at lower ORP.

The beauty of ozone use in a reactor followed by GAC before the water gets back to the main tank is that the ozone can remove the color from organic compounds, and then nearly all of the highly oxidizing species can be removed by the GAC before they get a chance to harm tank inhabitants.

Adding any oxidizer directly to the tank, like permanganate, allows it to indiscriminately oxidize all organics, whether they be yellow compounds in the water, or the surfaces of inhabitant tissues such as gills, polyps, etc. So that is not a good plan, IMO.

These have more:

ORP and the Reef Aquarium
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-12/rhf/feature/index.php

Ozone and the Reef Aquarium, Part 1: Chemistry and Biochemistry
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-03/rhf/index.php

Ozone and the Reef Aquarium, Part 2: Equipment and Safety
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-04/rhf/index.php

Ozone and the Reef Aquarium, Part 3: Changes in a Reef Aquarium upon Initiating Ozone
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-05/rhf/index.php

[Henriktheeight]

http://netclub.athiel.com/cyano/cyanos2.htm
According to this article the potassium helps the breaking down of DOC, in a way that the skimmer can't handle fully by it self...
It's an old article, but is there any truth in that?

If I would add just a tiny, unharmful, amount of potassium to the tank every day/week - wouldn't that help at all, on the nutrient levels?
Add it thru the skimmer, maybe?

[billsreef]

The skimmer doesn't break down DOC's, it just removes many of them. Adding permanganate is tricky at best, and dangerous at worst. One thing to keep in mind while reading any of Thiel's writing, he was selling product in everything he wrote ;)