Is potash sold just by itself? If so which nursery carries it?

I was at Lowe's and all the fertilizers were mixes. If I settle for a mix does it make a difference if the nitrogen is nitrate nitrogen or ammoniacal nitrogen? Thanks for the help.

I'd call up to suburban and see what they could do for you.
Mike

agreed... and it depends on if you want fish in the tank lol.... get a dolomite and potash mix i have enough for a 75g tank let me know lol or if you want to skip the worm crap i have mineralized soil kit w/ the potash and dolomite and red earth iron clay mix 45$ it will do a 55g or so

I'll stop by Suburban tomorrow and yes I want fish in the tank. Thanks for the offer but I will stick with the worm crap.
If Suburban doesn't have straight potash, I'll either mix in some of my dry K2SO4 or just skip it as I will be dosing anyway.

Any real nursery or landscaping store should have tons of potash unlike the big-box stores who only sell terrestrial plant products.

The problem I tend to run into is that they only sell 10lb to 50lb bags of peat, potash, and chelate so I end up with big Rubbermaid buckets of it in my garage. Unfortunately I'm currently out as I gave my supplies away when we moved up here.

- Brad

bradac56 wrote:


Thanks Brad. I was hoping that would be the answer. Suburban is apparently closed today so I will just use some of my K2SO4.

I have read that some use Osmocoat and similar products. I was surprised when I read the labels. Not that I know what I'm reading but ammoniacal nitrate just sounds like something that shouldn't go in a fishtank. I did find one that had very little ammoniacal nitrate and a fair amount of potassium. I may experiment with that someday.

Greg

Man you go to alot of trouble to set a tank up. All you need is topsoil and sand with a little peat for your bottum layer. The osmocote is used with clay. I will tell you first hand do not use florite. I been doing alot of plants to keep up with are clubs hap and I found out that most of the plants love just topsoil and sand. if you just layer it. So far by me doing this I have not had the famous crypt melt away. I my crypt's love this. One very touchy plant the pogostema helferi, also known as "donwi" like topsoil better, than the ADA soil, laterite, flourite mix.

topsoil I use is the cheap soil at lowe's, My brother has started a 75gal, with a organic topsoil, peat, and regular size river gravel, it seems that the organic topsoil does better.

but, this works for me and my brother. So take it with a grain of salt. you can view the masi hap to see what i have done.

Hi DW. Yeah I'm going to some trouble with this one. I like to experiment a little. And this tank is going to replace a high tech 22 gallon so I am going fancier. At some point, I will try just plain topsoil. Thanks for the suggestion.

Masi doesn't have online forums do they?

Three's nothing wrong with Flourite, Eco-Complete, 3M Quartz T, or any of the other 1mm-3mm substrates other than the price if you can find it locally on the cheap there all great. I've used everything except ADA products with good results.

Top Soil by itself has no beneficial nutrients and depending on the sand you pick it has nearly no CEC rating compared to things like peat moss (100.0 meq), SMS/Turface (29.8 meq) and Kitty Litter (27.0 meq) so you have to rely on water column ferts and root tabs or osmocote like the rest of us.

Funny enough I'm a big fan of topsoil except I tend to cap it with SMS instead of PFS most times but I do tend to have a problem with blind recommendations for one single product over everything else. It's worth the time and effort to try different things from time to time.

- Brad

worldf wrote:

They only have a yahoo group. pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/MASIFishHeads/
I have been lobbying for them to start an online forum.
Walter

bradac56 wrote:


Hi Brad,

My 3M Quartz is S grade which I believe is smaller than the T grade. Am I correct that the CEC will be lower for the S? Am I correct that this should just slow down the transfer to the water column? I'm not too concerned about it as I dose every other day anyway, S was all that was available and the worm casting will slowly work it's way up as whenever the substrate is disturbed.

I've got ADA Amazonia I in the tank I'm taking down. It has worked real well for 9 months or so. I was dosing on the light side and I've started seeing indications that there wasn't enough potassium in the water. Upping the dosing a little fixed that pretty quick.

Thanks.

Greg

no masi does not have a forum, which I'm with Walter. I don't know why.

On to the plants, We can all say what soil works for us. but I think a big factor that I been testing is the plant itself. We try to get a soil to help with all plants.
One reason I think the plants itself needs different soils is because some are heavy root feeder and some are water column feeders. Take swords, swords have been around for years, and people would grown them in plain gravel which has no added value but when give a root tab the plant takes off. Now try to take ludwiga you can grow that stuff by floating it.

I agree with Brad topsoil has nothing until you add it yourself. thats why I do pottery clay which is very rich in iron and osmocote, I just make clay balls with them. I also use jobe sticks for house plants. so the topsoil is rich. then I just add dry ferts that I get from a chemical co. four different ferts. my plants do well. but I do say I do it for the hap program.

but it what ever make your life easy. plant tanks are a lot of work. people think saltwater is bad.

Yes the S grade has less CEC than T grade and it tends to compact if your not careful but it will grow plants fine just remember to poke it with a chopstick every two or three months all around to keep the compaction in check until your deep rooted plants take care of it.

Yep even both ADA substrates loose there zing in about a year so unless you want to go down the MTS path (it lasts a few years longer) water column dosing is the best method and with a low tech tanks you wont need as much.

- Brad

Osmocote is good stuff just make sure you get the correct version (Osmocote Plus Multi-Purpose Plant Food 15-9-12) as the others only have NPK but this one also has trace. It's basically high grade root tabs.

I can attest to the extra work planted tanks can take, I'm not sure what I have the most of hornwort, java moss, duckweed, endler fry or guppy fry.

I just spend the last thirty minutes cutting out at lest a 10gal tank full of hornwort from five tanks into a bucket. That was from the bag I got from Walter at the November meeting and I just dumped it into the tanks without planting it. Given enough light and food it grows like mad.

- Brad