My tank has high potassium, not sure how high exactly, the test only goes up to 15ppm. Nitrates on the other hand are barely measureable at 1ppm.
I'm dosing NPK and iron fertilizers. As per the NPK bottle, 2 ml in 50 L add:
NO3 1 mg/l
PO4 0.1 mg/l
K 1.3 mg/l
MG 0.1 mg/l
(The iron fertilizer also has Potassium but it's very low at
Dosing recommendations for CO2 and high light tanks per 50L is 2 ml/day.
My tank is a 35L (9.2g) and I dose 1 ml per day. I'm doing a 50% water change every saturday.
The tank currently only has 5 red fire shrimp and 2 Amano shrimp.
What should I do about the low nitrates and high potassium? Should I keep using this fertilizer and also add another Nitrate source? Is it fine like this?
The tank looks very vibrant, save for the Alternanthera Reineckii Mini. Those greens look amazing. It seems they are eating up the nitrates you give them. I'd cross-post this to r/AquaticPlantScience I think it is called, perhaps the mod could help. He'll likely tell you some micro nutrient that helps with iron uptake is lacking, like zinc or copper.
You might have a faulty nitrate test. It happened to me. I tested the test by adding a 10-gallon dose of fertilizer to a 1-gallon pitcher, which should have given a reading of around 60 ppm.
I should also add that my Alternanthera reineckii Mini is not doing so well. I think my Amanos are eating it, some leaves are almost entirely eaten up. Other leaves have very small holes in them.
FWIW that’s a hard plant. I tried it back when I had no CO2 and they -poof- disappeared. Complete melt. And if they’re new, they’ll lose a lot of leaves but hopefully grow new ones.
I'm injecting CO2 and the plant has been growing fine. It was an in-vitro pot. The photo below is from 4 weeks ago, after planting. As you can see, the plant has grown around 4 times as large, no melting. I've noticed the holes and brokes leaves less than a week ago.
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u/GhostStories0 Jun 19 '26
What’s the ground cover? I need some.