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Re: Potassium limited?



From: Stephen Boulet <stepheb at comm_mot.com>
Subject: Potassium limited?
> I have been adding Seachem Flourish to the water. It has < 0.06 K (sorry no units;
> percent?), and I have a moderate number of fish (including two colorful diamond
> tetra males), so nitrates should not be a problem. I think that, with my hardness,
> calcium and magnesium shouldn't be a problem. Would anyone expect the Flourish to
> supply enough potassium by itself?
Stephen, you need some K. The Seachem site says it's < 0.06%, 
which is < 600mg/L in solution. If I used 10mls of it in a 20G tank 
(15G water column), I'd get 0.1ppm K. That's nothing. If I were you 
I'd definitely get some K in there. I keep around 20-30ppm K. For a 
while, I used only potassium sulfate, 'cause I always had plenty of 
NO3. But, for the last 6 months I've used nothing but KNO3 
because my NO3s were < 0.5ppm. Now for every 10ppm NO3 I 
add,  6.3ppm of K is added. The best of both worlds. Also, I've had 
to start adding PO4. For awhile my PO4 read < 0.03ppm and my 
plants had slowed down quite a bit. I feed pretty heavy, but my 
plants undoubtly feed even more heavily. I made up a weak solution 
(~0.1g/100ml) of potassium phosphate (dibasic) and add a ml of it 
each week, to get a final PO4 conc. of 0.050ppm, plus about the 
same amount of K. They seem to be loving it!


Jamie    <"\\\><