Potassium

[Craig Matthews]

Is dosing potassium once a week via seachem premier water softener ok? I add excel and seachem flourish and iron or daily, should pottasium be daily too?

 

[Konsa]

Hi
U are using liquid carbon so i will add daily.
Potassium is one of the macro elements required for plant growth.
Not familiar with your Seachem product but my personal preference is to stay away from products that alter water chemistry.Stability in water parameters is far more important than chasing ideal values for me.
Regards Konsa

 

[Craig Matthews]

It's basically a tap safe water conditioner with added pottasium for plants other than pottasium nothing else is in this conditioner it does not alter chemistry apart from remove chlorines etc. So I will add daily thanks alot

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

Depends really what you are trying to achieve so more information about the tank would be handy. From what I understand Premier isn't a water softener its a dechlorinator. When you add fresh tapwater to the tank it reacts with chloramine to produce a small amount of ammonium which plants can consume and adds a small amount of potassium to boot which plants also consume. Not sure if the reaction would still take place without chloramine in the tank which hopefully should be the case after the first treatment so there seems little point adding what I would guess is quite an expensive product if all you're after is a bit of potassium. Would be far cheaper just to buy some potassium sulphate and save the Premier just for water changes.

Plants need all the elements in micros and macros (Trace elements + nitrogen/potassium/phosphate/magnesium) if any of one these are missing plants will fail so it's best to use some kind of all in one fertiliser that contains them all in the correct ratios. How much of them needed by your particular tank depends on how bright the light is, if its co2 injected and plant mass. For what you get prom Premier I think I would just use any dechlorinator and invest in some ferts that covers everything. Again without knowing about your tank regarding the above and the size of it would depend on whether commercial products or making your own using dry salts would be more viable.

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

just to add, really speaking you shouldn’t really have Chloramine in your water to start with. Chlorine yes but from what I understand in the UK anyway they only use Chloramine in certain circumstances like flushing pipes after road works etc. Chloramine is pretty nasty stuff as it easily converts to Ammonia which isn't good for fish

 

[Craig Matthews]

Thanks for your reply, at the moment I have saggitaria,valis,twisted valis and crypt wendtii, all easy plants. I dose seachem flourish all round fert, seachem iron as I've read sag,Val and crypt like iron,root tabs and just started seachem excel. I've only been adding the seachem premier on water change day but as excel is now being dosed I'm wondering if certain macro's should be dosed more rather than a very small amount that's in the all round fert.My tank is 70 liter with 5 black widow tetra,4 x-ray tetra,5 cherry barbs and 4 amano's so nitrogen should be ok my ammonia is 0,nitrite 0, nitrate 20 and pH 7, temperature is 25°. Ive just upgraded my filter to the fluval u3 600lph with integrated vertical spray bar for planted tanks, all plants are dancing so flow is good. I have led lights, I've contacted juwel asking for a par reading but they don't so all I can add is it's a 6500k white led with 625 lumens and I've added a 6500k 400 lumen led white light to but I'm thinking about adding another 625 lumen light to have three LEDs. I have a mixture of inert gravel and seachem flourite red. My goal is too add more plants to make a heavily planted tank lush green and vibrant.

 

[Craig Matthews]

I've added a pic of my saggitaria it seems healthy growing new leaves but hasn't sent runners, had it about 5 weeks but new leaves seem a little pale if you can distinguish them but I'm trying to work out if they eventually turn normal green I've just noticed them and older leaves sometimes get large holes and eventually melt away and also some have patches of chlorosis it looks like, is this normal? O forgot too add I feed my fish every two days. Thanks in advance

 

[Craig Matthews]

Lights are on for 7 hrs a day and I use 70% RO water because tap water where I live is exceptionally hard, sorry keep missing things

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

Do you inject co2 mate? Hard to tell what that clear thing is in the back left corner. Hard water in Yorkshire, quite surprised at that!

 

[Craig Matthews]

I was injecting co2 with a cheap pressurised 20g bell for a while ive just stopped because BBA started because of unstable co2 and 20g don't last long, i was thinking about a soda stream bottle but heard they dont last long either. Don't fancy high pressure fe bottle with the baby about

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

To be fair mate the plants you have in there so far tend to do ok without co2 but buying an extra light is a no go or you'll just increase the demand for co2. The BBA probably wasn't an issue related to the co2 I would guess but if you fancy carrying on with it I would look into DIY stuff using yeast and sugar if pressurised isn't your thing and just connect it up to the bell. Lot of people get good results and I find just adding some co2 is a benefit in most situations as long as you're not driving the plants too hard with lighting.

You must be getting away with the levels of fert in the tank at the moment so extra lighting will also tip you over on that. Sorry I don't know much about your substrate or the fertiliser you are using but you tend to find they all have something missing usually the nitrogen, phosphate and magnesium. I would assume traces and Iron are covered in the Seachem stuff though. Your nitrogen is probably being covered at the moment by fish waste and possibly the substrate if it does contain it.

If it were me mate I would carry on with the lighting as is and buy some all in one ferts, commercially speaking APF all in one, EA the stuff George Farmer Promotes and Tropica Specialised spring to mind. Salts work out far cheaper in the long run though if you don't mind knocking up your own bottles which is as simple as making a cup of coffee.

For now though while using the ferts you have I would DIY the co2 and buy some Epsom salt (magnesium) as your tap water and most likely the ferts you currently have won't have any to see some improvements. There's lots of plants that will thrive in these conditions particularly the likes of crypts species. As the plant mass increases you may need to look at adding some additional nitrate and phosphate I would say. Sag and Vallis tend to be quite fast growers and suck up quite a lot of nutrients.

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

 

[Craig Matthews]

Well thanks alot for your reply good information received, I will be planting more heavily very soon so will look into seachem nitrogen as it's the unharmful ammonium form I haven't gravel vac'd in a couple of months so should be plenty of nitrogen. I will skip the light and invest in some better ferts, again thanks alot

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

I will be planting more heavily very soon so will look into seachem nitrogen

The issue I have with Seachems range is that to get all the macros and micros required their model seems to be to sell you them all in separate containers. A lot of the commercial products tend to either skip on the N and P or add the N and P as a different product IE Tropica Premium and Tropica specialised. They also tend to have the N and P in very low amounts. The problem these days is tank lighting has moved on getting some decent PAR for a relatively low price but the commercial ferts don't seemed to have reflected that and if you read the directions even from a world renowned company like Tropica it will still advise that at the first sign of Algae reduce the dose which is contrary to most plant keepers proved thinking that if anything reducing ferts is going to make the situation worse not better.

An all-in-one comprehensive fertiliser is a much better option IMO than having to buy a bottle of this and a bottle of that. The holes in some of your leaves may have been down to you withdrawing the co2 rather than potassium, plants get addicted to co2, when there's some about they change the way they use it. Not having any then having some is better for the plant than having some and having it taken away. The plant will deteriorate until it has adapted again to its new lower co2 environment.

At the moment your tank looks sparsely planted mate and low lit. You will be getting Iron from the Seachem, Potassium from your other Seachem product and N and P from fish waste. That still leaves all the other Trace elements and Magnesium, magnesium could be the cause of the yellowing leaves as it happens and is easily sorted by adding epsom salts. Using a good all-in-one fert means you know you're covered for all requirements with just one dose. I would go that route if I were you mate rather than trying to change what's missing later especially as the plants grow in more and demand increases. For the same price as what you paid for the two Seachem bottles you could have a few years worth of ferts and know that all micros and macros are covered.

 

[Craig Matthews]

I understand what your saying makes alot of sense, I'll get a third led light which would bring me to just over 1600 lumens meaning I will have 23.5 lumens per litre according to tropica that's enough for medium plants, I'll keep dosing the excel see how it goes and I've been looking at magnesium dry ferts that you add to distilled water and dose accordingly as all ferts lack magnesium

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

I understand what your saying makes alot of sense, I'll get a third led light which would bring me to just over 1600 lumens meaning I will have 23.5 lumens per litre according to tropica that's enough for medium plants, I'll keep dosing the excel see how it goes and I've been looking at magnesium dry ferts that you add to distilled water and dose accordingly as all ferts lack magnesium

You can get Magnesium Sulphate AKA Epsom Salts from the chemist or health food shops. I usually get mine in 100gram tubs from Teach chemist off the shelf.

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[Craig Matthews]

Is this the stuff?

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

That's the one pal. Meant to say I buy mine from Tesco in my previous thread not Teach haha. For 70 ltr tank put about half a teaspoon in when you change your water.

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

Meant to say, how comes your water is so hard or what makes you think that. Generally speaking most water up North is quite soft or you not living in Yorkshire?

 

[Craig Matthews]

Cool I got some seachem pottasium today as well, do root feeders such as valis,sag saggitaria and crypts actually use water column aswell,I do use root tabs. My ph used to be 8 and my legs says the the reading is of the chart I'm in Hull mate. Before I got my ph down to 7 I used to get white scale lines around the top of the aquairum so literally just half a table spoon right out the bag straight into the aquairum? I was reading that people dissolve it distilled water first?

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

In the main all plants get their nutrients from the water column. Yeah just dump it straight in the tank and it will dissolve instantly. I tried looking for your water report but you need to ask for one with your account number and address etc. This will just be an average but it's worthwhile seeing what tends to come out your tap. If your plants were lacking magnesium they should green up a bit pretty quickly.