Re: Chemical Names

["Hopkins, Samuel" <Samuel.Hopkins at marconi_com>]

Rachel,

	Chelated iron is what you want to use. 

For 72 gallons you'd use this formula (someone please correct me if I'm
wrong). I'll assume the percent of iron in your trace (check the package) is
5%.

72 X 3.785 = 272.52

1000 / 272.52 = 3.66 (this is how many PPM 1 gram of 100% pure chemical
would bring your 72 gallons to if you added it)

.05 (percent of iron) X 3.66 = 0.183 (Since you don't have 100% pure
chemical you multiply the 3.66 by the percentage of iron)

So if you added one gram of your trace and the iron was 5% and you had 72
gallons of water your iron level would be .183 PPM. This is too high. You
want around .1PPM so you'd use 1/2 gram to get you to .09 PPM which is close
enough.

Can't measure 1/2 gram? How about 1 ounce? Do this:

Add one ounce (28.34 grams) of trace to 1 liter (1000 ML) of water. Each ML
of solution would deliver .02834 grams of mixture. So you'd need to add 18
ML of this to your water to get to .1PPM of iron. Go to the pet store and
find the bird section. They have little syringes that count MLs. I think
Tetra makes them. They are used to feed baby birds, etc. 

The hard part is going to know how fast your plants are using your iron up
so you know what to dose the next time. You'll need an iron test kit for
this unfortunately. =(

Sam

>1. Is iron chelate the stuff you would use to dose iron? About how much 
>would you add to a 72 gallon tank, and how often? I do not have an iron
test 
>kit.