GlassWalker
Member
I have a feeling this might be a "how long is a piece of string" type question, but how much sodium do you need before there are adverse effects on plants? I presume different plants would have different tolerances e.g. marine plants might like a lot of it! But here I'm of course more interested in typical tropical freshwater aquarium plants.
In case you're wondering why I'm asking this, my main tank is a heavily stocked with fish and that chews through KH like it is going out of fashion. On top of water changes, I intend to start dosing to help keep it from getting too low.
I did a rough calculation earlier. Since I have dosing bottles that makes it easy for me to apply. They're 500ml, and by my calculations I can use 91g of potassium bicarbonate per 500ml to give a solution, which at 20ml in 100L would give 1 dKH and 14mg/l potassium. My water is already high in potassium to start with, and I'm dosing EI on top of that... so I'm half debating if I should use sodium bicarbonate. That also has a minor plus in that I already have a mix of that prepared for my marine tanks. I guess I'm more worried about the presence of sodium than I am about a possible excess of potassium. If I used sodium bicarbonate, I'd be adding 8.3mg/l of sodium per dKH.
In case you're wondering why I'm asking this, my main tank is a heavily stocked with fish and that chews through KH like it is going out of fashion. On top of water changes, I intend to start dosing to help keep it from getting too low.
I did a rough calculation earlier. Since I have dosing bottles that makes it easy for me to apply. They're 500ml, and by my calculations I can use 91g of potassium bicarbonate per 500ml to give a solution, which at 20ml in 100L would give 1 dKH and 14mg/l potassium. My water is already high in potassium to start with, and I'm dosing EI on top of that... so I'm half debating if I should use sodium bicarbonate. That also has a minor plus in that I already have a mix of that prepared for my marine tanks. I guess I'm more worried about the presence of sodium than I am about a possible excess of potassium. If I used sodium bicarbonate, I'd be adding 8.3mg/l of sodium per dKH.