Dosing Fe with a dosing pump

[LMuhlen]

I've been dosing Fe gluconate with a dosing pump and today it occurred to me that at such low doses, the solution takes several days to travel from the bottle to the tank. I'm using transparent tubing, do you think it is likely to be degrading before it hits the tank? The tubing gets indirectly exposed to the tank light.

 

[simon_the_plant_nerd]

I couldn’t say about the science but anecdotally I dose Fe DTPA in clear tubing too but haven’t experienced any deficiencies. I too would be interested to know the answer on this.

 

[Connswater]

I couldn’t say about the science but anecdotally I dose Fe DTPA in clear tubing too but haven’t experienced any deficiencies. I too would be interested to know the answer on this.

Ah the science, if only I had a PhD in chemistry...I used to throw the odd human Iron tablet into the tank, and bury one against an Amazon sword or two, it seemed to work, iron sulfate, my PhD chemistry friend tells me, 'yes that would work, at least for a while', hard water apparently then becomes an issue. Now I too add iron but with EDTA, all completely I'm afraid beyond me.

 

[Zeus.]

When I was dosing light sensitive liquid ferts, I some black tape and covered the tubing, didnt take that long or you could just get some black tubing.
I also use to make the ferts on the weak side so I dosed a larger volume, so ferts didnt lasts months and it also did a little top up of tank

 

[Wookii]

I've been dosing Fe gluconate with a dosing pump and today it occurred to me that at such low doses, the solution takes several days to travel from the bottle to the tank. I'm using transparent tubing, do you think it is likely to be degrading before it hits the tank? The tubing gets indirectly exposed to the tank light.

I use this this stuff on my dosing lines:




Also to prevent the Fe being in the line for so long, you could just decrease the concentration and increase the volume per dose.

I just add Fe Gluconate to my general micro mix, rather than on its own, so its always a decent sized dose.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I'm using transparent tubing, do you think it is likely to be degrading before it hits the tank?

I think black tubing is a good idea, but in the case of iron II (ferrous) gluconate ((C12H22FeO14.2H2O)) it isn't photo-degraded, so light isn't a problem in the way it would be for iron chelates like FeEDTA etc.

Having said that I would want the ferrous gluconate solution in the line for too long, you may get bacterial growth, due to its organic carbon content.

Personally it would be pretty low on my list of iron (Fe) supplying fertilisers, unless I had very soft and acidic tank water. This might help <"Iron gluconate">, it has comments from scientists and input from Greg Morin of Seachem.

The genius of Seachem is to find a product and then <"write some advertising"> to sell it.

I'd guess Seachem use it because it is a <"cheap compound to buy">, and only after that did they come up with the rationale for its "advantages" as an iron source.

cheers Darrel