Dosing KNO3

["Rachel Sandage" <rachelsor at hotmail_com>]

There have been several posts about dosing KNO3 and the unreliability of 
test kits recently. One helpful web site for a reality check is Chuck Gadd's 
dosage page: http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_dosage_calc.htm.

I find this page very useful for checking dosage. What I do is plug in the 
amount of fertilizer (say, 1/2t of KNO3), the size of my tank, (72 gallons), 
and pretend I am dissolving it in 1ml of water. The calculator then tells me 
what the concentration of nitrate I should have in the tank. I know there is 
some uncertainty here - for example, my 72 gallon tank probably only has 
60-65 gallons of water in it - but since we are looking for a range of 
nitrate (5-10 ppm), I think this is accurate enough.

So if you have been adding 2t KNO3 daily to your 50 gallon tank, and your 
test kit is showing a concentration of 2ppm, this calculator will give you a 
pretty good idea of what the actual concentration is.

-rachel





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