[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Potassium limited?



Thanks Jamie for the reply.

Two days after adding potassium (Aquarium pharmaceuticals 'leaf zone' product for now;
KSO4 and KNO3 on order) and 4 days after some Jobes fern stick pieces, I'm starting to
get several inches a day of growth from my corkscrew vals. Some of the other plants seem
to be doing better too (hair grass and a plant that looks like Tropica's picture of a
Cyperus helferi).

That's a nice change from before. Hopefully the end is in sight for the green hair
algae.

-- Stephen

> 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!
>