# ppm figures



## jamesbrokman10 (Nov 4, 2005)

just wondering what my ppm's are supposed to be for iron,nitrogen,potassium,magnesium,etc, its going to be a heavily planted tank with co2 and high light


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## bigstick120 (Mar 8, 2005)

Check out the fertilator at the top of the page, it will even help you calculate how much to dose


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

Here is a link to one of the stickies at the top of the fertilization page. The second post gives you some good recommendations.

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/showthread.php?t=8530

I wouldn't bother trying to test iron since it seems that most iron test kits are inaccurate.

You are using RO water correct? I saw the RO unit in your pics  You can use Seachem's Equilibrium or the GH Booster Greg Watson sells on his site to reconstitute your water. Both of these will give you Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, and iron I believe.

You could also purchase the dry chemicals (Ca, Mg, etc) separately and add them to whatever ratio you would like. I believe a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio is what is recommended for Ca:Mg.

Since you have a larger tank, you may want to do some reading on the PPS fertilization system. Links for that are in the stickies at the top of this forum also. No matter what system you use to fertilize your tank, make sure to keep your CO2 levels at least 30ppm during the photoperiod.


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## jamesbrokman10 (Nov 4, 2005)

*dosing*

On dosing , i have aquired a aqua medic quatro dosing pump, it has 4 pumps and a controller all built together, im sure a few of you have seen it, but with that dosing pump can i use dry fert and mix trhem into a solution and use the dosing pumps? will they seperate? Remember this is my first planted tank, also is dry ferts cheaper than liguids? if so i here greg watsons products are awesome, also does he sell in larger quantities as i am going to be using alot of ferts in here, also i am going to use that dosing pump because alot of the time my scedule does not alow me to put in an hour a day on the tank, i am a union operator so sometimes i work long hours. also for the number of different additives i thin i might have to purchase another dosing pump


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## jamesbrokman10 (Nov 4, 2005)

Also on the 30ppm of c02, the tank will have discus in it and i want the ph to be around 6-6.5 and that os controlled by the milwaukee sms122, if it holds the ph at a certain set point say 6.2 will the ppm of co2 be right?


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

jamesbrokman10 said:


> Also on the 30ppm of c02, the tank will have discus in it and i want the ph to be around 6-6.5 and that os controlled by the milwaukee sms122, if it holds the ph at a certain set point say 6.2 will the ppm of co2 be right?


You need to know your pH *and* KH to determine CO2 levels...


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## jamesbrokman10 (Nov 4, 2005)

i have a sera co2 long term test kit that mounts in the tank , well in my case i will be putting it in the sump, does anybody have any expeirience with these, are they accurate?


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

I also use an AquaMedic dosing system but the twin, not quatro.

One pump is used to dose my micros (currently using Seachem Flourish and Flourish Fe).

The second pump is used to dose my macros; a mixture of KNO3, K2SO4 and KH2PO4 in RO water.

You don't necessarily need to keep each chemical separate, just separate your micros (Fe and traces) from your macros... Fe and PO4 will precipitate out of solution if mixed together in high concentrations.

But dosing each individually would give you more fine tuning capability!

One thing to note about the AquaMedic dosing systems: if the power is cut, they *don't* automatically start back up. You have to manually get them going again. This is the only drawback to this system and might push me towards trying something else next time (like a simple peristalic pump connected to a digital timer that has a battery backup).


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