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Seachem Potassium melting floating plants?


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Hi folks!  So I've been dosing Easy Green for >1.5 yrs.  I recently added Seachem Potassium to my dosing as well as I have a tank with a TON of java ferns that weren't doing so well, and I was told they're potassium hogs.  Since I started dosing it, I notice my Amazon Frogbit is just not doing well, leaves are rotting off, roots are falling off.  It's still growing, but struggling along instead of going gangbusters as it has for over a year.  I notice the smell of the Seachem Potassium is similar to what I remember Seachem Flourish Excel smelling like, and I know that stuff is hard on delicate plants like frogbit.  I can't compare them directly as I threw out the Flourish Excel after losing some ottos following dosing it (according to the regular dosing, not initial dosing!).

 

My questions are:  Has anyone else noticed any ill effect after adding Seachem Potassium to their dosing regimen?  Any knowledge of what causes it's pungent smell?

 

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Maybe try dosing half of the recommended amount for your aquarium and see if your Frog bit bounces back. One time I stopped dosing Seachems Potassium and my Java Ferns starting to struggle. So I started back up again, but I don’t do the full recommended dosage. I probably dose 80% of what I should for my size aquariums. Even with that amount my Frog bit never really looks 100%, maybe it’s the potassium maybe it’s my super hard water. They grow but they don’t thrive. 

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Thanks for the replies!  Definitely possible it could be a coincidence.  Just weird.

@Kurt Brutting I've been dosing at half the recommended amount to start.  Yeah the Java Fern is finally looking good again after a ruthless removal of the poor looking leaves and a couple months of regular dosing of the potassium so I don't want to cut it off... but I could try reducing it a bit further to see if that does the trick!

 

@Lennie  How much are you dosing?

 

This tank was previously a bit of a frogbit farm - I sell excess plants locally at about half of what you'd buy them for at a store, some of which we never see at local stores and they're hard to buy online as they don't ship well.  It's nice to have a hobby that can pay for it's own upkeep and selling plants allows me to meet more local aquarists as we don't have a club!

 

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On 4/19/2023 at 8:31 PM, CanadaAmanda said:

@Lennie  How much are you dosing?

In my 125Liters tank, I dose half cap, in my 160 Liters tank, a lil more than half cap.

I always underdose my ferts. My liquid fertilizer has some potassium too, so does Equilibrium. I use equilibrium during water changes so I don't do a full dose. 

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I use Flourish potassium to help my Java ferns, too, and I grow frogbit like crazy. The only tank where it gets long roots is my shrimp-only tank. I guess the goldfish, platies or guppies trim the roots in my others. So could there be a chance your fish are dining on the roots?

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