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Substrate dosing



Some mumblings from another board:

I've suggested using agarose powder to make a gel, and adding KNO3, K2SO4,
traces, KH2PO4 to it.
This will slowly release these nutrients which you can easily control and
mix to any ratio one desires.
Potting soil is cheap and easy but if you uproot it you'll be in trouble. I
don't like adding things that are high in NH4. You can also use the agar in
various thicknesses to get faster slow dissolution rates.
You could make a bunch of squares in a pan and wait till it hardens , then
cut it up into small sized cubes. Store it in a sealed container so it does
not dry out.

This is what we use in streams to study the effects of algae(but use NH4NO3)
without bombing the entire stream. This way we only bomb a localized area
with fert's.

 Works very well for molecular diffusion and is used in molecular biology
for DNA analysis for electrophoresis but has been replace by polyacrylimide
gels. Still, it's cheaper, easy to mix and a nice porous media to add fert's
to the substrate.

If you have enough PO4 or NO3 in your tap water etc you can make custom tabs
for your tank deleting PO4 or NO3 etc.

Regards, 
Tom Barr