Hi… here for advice

[Connswater]

actually don’t understand any of it

I think, if your starting a club, you now have two members, I really don't understand the mixing formulas! I add some sequestered iron after water changes, sometimes some potassium tablets and very occasionally a small amount of high Potash tomato feed if my frogbit is a bit pale or some salvinia has gone brown, and have a few plant nutrition tablets in the substrate, if the crypts look tired or are slow to grow new leaves, I push a few in around the roots, but as for mixing my own ingredients, I know when I would be moving out of my league.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I actually don’t understand any of it

I need to educate myself a bit more before delving into making my own fertiliser.

I understand this but very, very few of our members are going to make a fertiliser solution from scratch. It is possible, <"The scientific background to the "Leaf Colour Chart"">, but only really necessary if you want a bespoke, designer mix with unusual characteristics. If you want <"an analogy"> it is like a situation where the only clothes you can have are those that are "made to measure" for you by a Savile Row tailor.

Most people are going to buy a "ready made mix" and that includes the <"2hr Aquarist etc">.

I think, if your starting a club, you now have two members, I really don't understand the mixing formulas!

@Happi has done the work for you <"Solufeed 2:1:4 and Solufeed Sodium Free TEC or Solufeed Coir TEC Combination">,

cheers Darrel

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
I'll put an example in, which shows the simple maths that underlies all nutrient calculators - <"Nutrient Dosing Calculator">, using:

• potassium nitrate (KNO3) <"Potassium nitrate - Wikipedia">,
• a 100 litre tank, and
• a target of 10 ppm (mg / l) nitrate (NO3-), and
• the ppm potassium (K+) that this addition of KNO3 also provides.

We need to know the RAM (<"Relative atomic mass - Wikipedia">) of potassium (K), which we can get from <"Potassium - Wikipedia">, and it is 39.1, and the RAM of <"Nitrate - Wikipedia"> (NO3), which is 62 (14 + (16 * 3)).

This means the RMM (<"Molecular mass - Wikipedia">) of KNO3 is 62 + 39 = 101, which I'm going to call "100" so we are entirely multiplying and dividing by "tens".

So 1 g of KNO3 has 0.39 g of potassium and 0.62 g of nitrate and to get to 1 g of nitrate we need to add 1 / 0.62 = 1.61g of KNO3.

One gram is 1000 milligrams and "mg / l" are equivalent to "ppm" when we add ~1.6 g of KNO3 to a litre of water we have 1000 ppm NO3- and our tank is 100 litre, so 1000 / 100 = 10 ppm NO3.

The amount of potassium added is 1.61 * 0.39 = 0.63 and that KNO3 addition also gives us 6.3 ppm of potassium. It really is that straightforward.

Even the super-duper IFC calculator <"IFC Aquarium Fertilizer Calculator"> is under-pinned by these calculation.

Four and half billion years in the making, based on star-dust, endorsed by Gods and brought to you straight from Mount Olympus......."

The IFC Aquarium Fertilizer Calculator

cheers Darrel

 

[megwattscreative]

Hi John, hope you're well! I also don't understand the chemistry or fertilisers :') but I use the frogbit index (there's a fantastic article on it by @dw1305) to help work out what's lacking. Essentially, you just look at the plants and can roughly diagnose what's missing without needing to fiddle with any tech.

I use a very small amount of solufeed 2:1:4 and chempak chelated iron with manganese. I was a bit worried initially as the solufeed box says it's dangerous for aquatic life - I'm sure it wouldn't help if you dumped it in a natural stream - but for our purposes it's a great way of adding nutrients into a closed system. Lots of people on here use it, so I trusted them and it's been a year + of success!

I'm running a low tech tank so change is a lot slower, but I literally add a small dose based on the estimative index (2.5ml of each for my 100L tank) twice a month or so, more if I'm doing large water changes. Then I look to see if there are any issues using the frogbit index and dose accordingly. It's worked extremely well for me and is cheap and low effort. Good luck!