Re: Dosing routine a possible cause of Algae?
For K, all you need is from KNO3.
Unless you have a low light tank, high fish load combo.
Adding K2SO4 will not hurt though.
Here's the details:
If you dose a fair amount of NO3 via KNO3, keep nice tank parameters, don't have much fish load, I'd suspect you don't need to add K separately.
Steve and I did this for awhile, there were times when folks could not get any K2SO4 around the area, so we did without.
We never really found much difference.Steve suggested we did not need any extra K as it was being supplied via KNO3.
If you have 6.4 ppm of so of NO3, then you add 4 ppm of K using KNO3. Some products have K+, like TMG.
I find it unlikely you really need MORE K+ to grow plants well and ************it's one less thing that folks need to dose which is my goal here****.
Looking at a mass balance of N/K+ ratios, __most/many__ plants have about 1.5 :1 ratios of N:K(Epstien 1972).
Now take into account the O3 part of NO3 and to get elemental N and you suddenly find you have plenty of K+ for plant growth.
So 1.5/4.4= .34 N's for every K+ you add.
So you should theoretically have 3x as much K as you need relative to N x the 1.5/1 ratio = 4.5x as much K+ relative to N per dose.
.
There are other sources of N, plant decomposition, fish waste but some K+ comes from these pools also.
I really do doubt that adding K2SO4 to such a tank will make any significant difference.
Unlike NO3 and denitrifying bacteria NO3=>N2 gas, there is not much to the K+ cycle except for plant uptake/leaching.
So it certainly is something folks can skip if they add KNO3 as their main source of N.
Now if you have a good fish load, over feed Discus, slow growth/non CO2 etc, adding K+ from KCl/K2SO4 is advisable since you already will have plenty of NO3.
But for many, KNO3 as the source of both N and K should do the trick.
I'd say you simply don't need but 3 things, KH2PO4, KNO3 and traces.
And then the other two parts: Light and CO2.
I'm glad Ghori brought it up as I've not thought about it since I guess 1997 or so. But going through it, it should not be a problem even with all the different plant species needs and possible extra K+ needs a plant might have.
I think it's be EVEN easier for the new folks and us too, to delete one more nutrient from the mix.
That is a GOOD GOAL.
The goal is to reduce down with simpler designs/methods/dosing routines for folks that still work very well.
Importantly:
Just remember if you have NO3 issues from the tap/fish load, you will still find a use for K+ dosing from KCl or K2SO4.
A follow up:
I typically will round down to add a buffer of error and call it 4:1, N:K based of Epstein's 1972 anaylsis.
Not all plants will have the same N:K make up, but with a 4:1 ratio buffer, adding KNO3 should easily handle any differences between plant species and aquatic species differences(generally these have lower N/K ratios).
So the practical effect is you don't need to add more K+ in almost every case unless you have very high bioloading, too high IMO.
50% of the N from a CO2 enriched tank is pushing it.
Also tap water can have a fair amount of NO3 so that can influence whether you need K2SO4.
Regards,
Tom Barr
