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Dosing KNO3
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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