phosphate and bba

Nitrate and phosphate easy to test but what about Pottasium?
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K test kits pretty much aren't worth the money. However the blessing is that K doesn't seem to contribute to algea issues the way the other macro nutrients do furthermore, you can actually hit some pretty high levels of K without side effectrs so a slight overdose poses no danger.

With all of that in mind most of us dose for ratios after water changes, and just make sure we have plenty in the tank. Chucks calculator is awesome, but IMHO (very humble I might add) It takes a little more K than his calculator reccomends. I dose 24-30 ppm weekly after water changes. If I drop lower on my dosage, my annubias start looking like swiss cheese almost immediatly.

Also often see things folks talk about mg per Liter....does that have an equivalent in ppm
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Mg/l and ppm are equivalent fortunately

I don't remember the percentage of K to N in KNO3, but Chuck's calculator shows both nutrients, so what I do is dose KNO3 for N, and figure out how much K that gives me then supplement additional if needed for my target ratio.
dave
 
Dave just about covered it. I'll just hit on a few things.

As Dave said most people just dose for K. Measuring is not accurate and overdosing is not a problem. And back to my earlier post on recommended nutrient levels for best plant growth and subsequently to clear up algae - K at 20ppm is recommended. As I said earlier, if you were doing 50% water changes every week, you are basically resetting the tank every two weeks. So you never run the risk of overdosing and there is little need to test. You know you have at most 2 weeks worth of ferts. in the tank. It's called the Estimative Index...check this out
http://www.barrreport.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1

As for how that fits into the N-P-K ratio...I forget. I've just seen this countless times to help people clear up algae problems while having their plants flourish:
Nitrate (NO3) 5-20 ppm (5 for red plants, 20 for most).
Phosphate (PO4) 0.4 to 1.0 ppm.
- maintain phosphates in a close range of 14 to 1 of NO3 to PO4
Potassium 20-30 ppm.
- based on dosing not testable

As Dave said, you can use Chuck's calc. to get the K from KNO3 and then just dose K (K2SO4 works good for this) to hit 20ppm.

As far as your particular setup with 1wpg and no pressurized Co2, I would do the following (I know I wrote most of this before, but it can't hurt):
Lighting at least 12 hours per day
CO2 - dose with Flourish Excel as recommended
Macro:
Nitrate (NO3) 5-20 ppm.
- dose with Potassium Nitrate (KNO3)
*You need to get your Nitrates up to 20 to bring your ratio closer to 14/1.
Phosphate (PO4) 0.4 to 1.0 ppm.
- maintain phosphates in a close range of 14 to 1 of NO3 to PO4
- dose with KH2PO4 if needed.
*At this point you don't need to dose Phosphate and probably never will with your fish load. You need to be removing it with Seachem Purigen or the like.
Potassium 20-30 ppm.
- based on dosing not testable
- dose with K2SO4
*You could probably get by with what is in KNO3, if not, dose up to 20ppm.
Micro:
- dose with Flourish or Tropica Master Grow as per recommendation.
*You could probably get by with 1/2 of the recommended traces or none at all and just leave it up to your tap water and fish food. I would probably start with none and see how it goes. With low light and no Co2, most people over-fertilize and it's just a recipe for algae. I would use traces and Iron sparingly, get your phosphate down, nitrate up, and dose K to 20ppm.

Also, check this site out. It's another board similar to AquariaCentral, but the planted tank section is phenominal.
http://www.tropicalresources.net
 
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Mooch - the rules of thumb were set from, and most folks on the web are running, tanks 15-75 gallons. The crude guesstimates work fine there, or as well as they ever work. But for smaller and larger tanks, they do not work well at all. Small tanks such as 10s need to be way overlighted to get the same effect as lower lighting in more common tank sizes. Big tanks on the other hand need less, and this is seen in artificial light growth of terrestial plants as well - when the illumination area gets large, you no longer have point source (MH, etc.) or line source (fluorescent in its varying formats) lighting, but close to uniform field light (as in cloudy bright days outdoors, or lightly whitewashed greenhouses) which turns out to be more nearly optimum growth.
 
RTR said:
Mooch - the rules of thumb were set from, and most folks on the web are running, tanks 15-75 gallons. The crude guesstimates work fine there, or as well as they ever work. But for smaller and larger tanks, they do not work well at all. Small tanks such as 10s need to be way overlighted to get the same effect as lower lighting in more common tank sizes. Big tanks on the other hand need less, and this is seen in artificial light growth of terrestial plants as well - when the illumination area gets large, you no longer have point source (MH, etc.) or line source (fluorescent in its varying formats) lighting, but close to uniform field light (as in cloudy bright days outdoors, or lightly whitewashed greenhouses) which turns out to be more nearly optimum growth.
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I see, thanks.

It's funny you say that though, because in my 72 gallon, i could grow very few plants with 1.5 watts per gallon of lighting, however, those same plants are growing very decent in my ten gallon hospital tank, with 30 watts of incandescent lighting. Of course, they are growing much better in my 72 with 3.7 watts per gallon and C02 injection now, but i was surprised to see them doing so well in the ten, despite the "smaller the tank, the more lighting" rule of thumb.
 
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