Friday, December 14, 2007

Potassium Deficiency





You can read all over the internet that potassium (K) deficiency often manifests as pinholes in older leaves.


In my tanks I find that Hygrophila corymbosa 'kompakt' is the perfect indicator for potassium levels in the tank. Its a K-Pig

Recently I removed all supplemental K from my fert mix and gH booster mix to test an idea that lower K would help kill off some filamentous algae (it didn't). I use KNO3 for my nitrate supply so there was still some K going into the tank daily.

These pics show the impact of low K on Hygrophila corymbosa 'kompakt'


The pinholes developed on older leaves after the first week and later the affected leaves came off. I've been scooping handfuls of leaves that look like this from the water surface over the past few weeks.


This photo was taken just after I added K2S04 back into my macro fert mix and gH booster (made similar to Seachem's Equilibrium). You can see the plants are poorly shaped as they have lost a lot of leaves but new growth is looking good again!


I took this photo of a healthy plant today (not the same one)... you can see a couple of older leaves with pinholes still attached but the new growth is spectacular.

I also found significant pinholes and minor leaf thinning in Hygrophila polysperma 'rosanervig'. My Ludwigias started to look a bit dodgy also (blotchy colour, poor growth). Other plants didn't show any real stress.​

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