# Dosing ideas for my tank?



## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

Hey all. Sorry in advance for hte length. Just so much to learn I am getting very serious now about plant health and nutrients. I would love to gbet my tank balanced and have nice lush growth. Let me give you my tank parameters and then go from there......

10 gallon with plain gravel, mostly 2-3 mm in size, no substrate ferts. 3 wpg of NO florescent. 1 6700k and one 10000k from the hagen series. Penguin 125 hob filter, no biowheel and DIY co2 directly into input of filter. Out of tap kH is 2 I add Na2HCO3 to raise kH to 4.5. Ph generally 6.6 in morning 6.8 at night. No3 levels....I try for 5 mg/l but it climbs to 10 wihtin 2 days. I add a few drops of Sera florena every couple days but I imagine it does not do much. 

Now for the new stuff. My p test kit (seachem) came today along with the flourish and flourish trace I ordered. I now am learning the the trace does not do much but I'll deal with that later. P reading is .1 I picked up some Fleet but not dosing until I figure out dosing amounts. From my internet reading it seems that 1 ml of fleet=about 130mg of PO4, there fore 1 ml in 37.8 liters(10 gallons)=3.4mg/l of PO4. If I want a target of .5 (observing the 10:1 N) then I would dose 1/7th of a ml. Does that seem correct? I tested adding drops to a measuring vial and got ~30 drops for 1 ml. So 30/7=4.25. So adding 4-5 drops of fleet should give me .5mg/l in my 10 gallon tank, or 1 drop=.1(ish). I am a little math challenged so I assume that is wrong

As for the Flourish, the bottle says 1-2 ml ber 20 gallons. I dosed 1 ml. What do you all think of that? Enough, to much. How often would I need to dose Flourish? I would assume that dosing would be based on plant health which could be judged by the uptake of macronutrients especially N and P. is there enough Fe in that flourish fo rhealthy plant growth? Right now I am more concerned wiht health than bright colors. I figure once I get the growth ironed out then I can start increasing specific ferts for specific goals. Should I add and occasional F. Trace splash to the menu?

Final question, I have been adding about 10 mg/l of K (from K2SO4) I know that there is new info about higher K and soft water leading to nutrient uptake problems (specifically Ca and possible Mg) but I am not sure what high doses of K are. I rarely need to dose KNO3 (yet) so there wont really be any going into the tank. Or is there enough in Flourish? I do not know my GH yet but hopefully i will get the test kit tomorrow evening.

Sorry again for the long post. Hope it is not a problem. Thanks for listening.


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## IUnknown (Feb 24, 2004)

http://www.philboucher.com/greg/new/14gallonwatercolumnfertjournal.xls

Above link is a messy example of what I dose for a 18T. With a higher light tank it is recommended to dose 3 times the recommended dose on flourish. I would go for 2-3mL. Make sure your tank is heavily planted, with fast growers to start. Dose 2-3 times per week. It would be nice to get an iron rich substrate. Why do your No3 climb so fast? Do you have a lot of fish? I would aim for 1 mg/L for Po4 if you have a fully planted tank. So like 1/4 mL of po4. You should be fine with your K. If you are going to get anything else in terms of ferts, I would get flourish Fe and dose 1 mL mid week, and get excel and dose 2 mL 2-3 times a week, just for back up with DIY, which is problematic. The most important thing is to have a lot of plant mass to make things easier to deal with.

http://www.aquatic-plants.org/fert/est_index/est_index1.html


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## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

Originally no3 was climbing because of high fish load and lack of nutrients causing poor growth. I am in the process of taking care of these issues but I have one more question to add to my original question.. I just test my water for GH for the first time and find that I have a GH of 8`. This seems good but I only have a kH of 2 which I adjust to around 4 wiht NaH2CO3 (baking soda). I also dose around 8ppm of k from K2SO4 after every waterchange. Does anyone forsee any problems with Ca or Mg uptake based on my conditions?


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