In article ,
Koi-Lo My impersonator is Roy TJ Hauer aka Roy. wrote:
I'll look for the stump-remover. I believe I saw that at one of the stores.

Well there ya go then. The label should say what's in it, I *think* there's
one that doesn't have KNO3 but the rest do. You can goodle the brand
name as this has been discussed to death in ages past.

It's essentially, salt.

And yet it works so well in my ponds and plant prop' tanks. I don't add
regular salt to my ponds.

Well you would;nt need to :-)

It'll help build up potassium and if your pond is potassium deficient it'll
do some good I guess if the chloride ions don't build up too much.

The old Tetra fertilizer was just potassium, in tanks with a high fish load
this is sometimes all you need, but only in very rare cases. Still the
chloride ion buildup is an issue without water changes.

What would be the signs of too much potassium in an aquarium? After all I
can add too much stump-remover as well (PN).

I don't remember off hand, but people have had issues with it.

I understand the mindset of "oh god I've added all these chamicals and had
no or bad results why should I ad more". BDTD.

That's exactly how I feel - yes.

Yeah, it's a funny feeling but it goes away when you see what good it does.

The same checmicals that gave me great trepidation a year ago I now dump in
as routine and I haven't see that awful black algae since and remember I battled
it for 7 years and tried bleach, peroxide, you name it. When I quit being
so damn stubborn and just did that Tom Barr said and threw away my nitrate
test kit things starting looking like showcase planted tanks around here.

OK,... but as I recall I was told there was too much nitrate and phosphorus
in my tanks last winter, and that was the cause of the RB algae. I was told
to do major water changes and really clean the gravel, which I did. Why do
this and then add more nitrate and phosphate from GregWatson? Can you see
what's so confusing here?

High nitrates and phosphates don't cause algae. Ammonia does. Tom and
I have both tried way too high nitrate and phosphate and it does absolutely
not cause algae. In a tank with no nitrate added and a phosphate removing
product - algae grows very well.

PROBABLY? We can't know that since it works great in my outside tubs and
ponds. Are you saying the all the potassium in the Seachem products somehow
fought-it-out with the Muriate of Potash and the plants were all deprived of
this mineral? How can one suppress the other? I added very little MofP.

It's really pointless to speculate what happens when things go wrong with
the wrohg recipe, there's too many failure modes, and frankly who cares?

Do the right thing and things will be fine.

1) Remove all the alage you can mechcnically.
2) Change 85% of the water a day for two days
3) Fertilize properly.


--
Need Mercedes parts? http://parts.mbz.org
Richard Sexton | Mercedes stuff: http://mbz.org
1970 280SE, 72 280SE | Home pages: http://rs79.vrx.net
633CSi 250SE/C 300SD | http://aquaria.net http://killi.net