potassium......

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tropicfishman

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Jan 16, 2006
Messages
1,918
Location
Ashland KY
hey guys, I was reading on greg watson's site that adding potassium is a usually always a good idea. I was wondering if I would benefit from it, my setup is this:

29 gallon tank thats pretty well stocked on fish
typical walmart substrate
No CO2
stock 20 watt lighting ( flourescent )
medium heavy planted with all low light plants

the only thing I have been adding as a supplement is Florapride and it says it has potassium and iron. But I heard its not enough potassium and I should prolly get seachems products. SO would I benefit from dropping florapride and just getting some potassium supplement?

my water parameters are as follows:

PH 7.0
ammonia 0
phosphates 1.5- 2 hard to tell
nitrite 0
nitrate right around 20 ppm
 
K2SO4 (potassium sulfate) is the best way to add potassium if you have a highly driven tank, but in most highly driven tanks you will already be dosing KNO3 (potassium nitrate) for N and you will not need to dose K. Your plants will need so much N from the KNO3 that the K will equilibrate. Pinhole spots are always a good indicator of low K. If you see this then slowly increase K2SO4 dosing. In my experience it is hard to overdose K (in the form of K2SO4). I dose 20 ppm of K2SO4 per week (10ppm on water change, 5 ppm two days later, and 5 ppm two days after that). If you still see pinhole damage on Crypts or other plants, consider that you may need higher levels of NO3 or PO4. My advice anyway :p
 
If you want to switch to Seachem products then you'd be looking at Flourish Comprehensive for Traces (ironically a better Trace fert than their Flourish Trace) and Flourish Potassium. You could also just pick up some NoSalt (KCl) from the store for the Potassium. Some water source have plenty of Potassium, but most don't. It also happens to be nearly impossible to overdose, so you might as well dose some to hedge your bets.
 
With that low of light and only slow growing plants, it is possible you don't need any ferts at all. I personally wouldn't dose anything until I started seeing deficiencies. Fish waste might be enough.
 
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