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Re: Iron Gluconate
Greg Morin wrote:
>That actually falls in nicely with what I said earlier... the
>plants you described lack roots, therefore the leaves and stems
>have taken on the critical characteristics of roots (i.e. iron chelate
>adsorbption). Of course there are always going to be exceptions... I'm
>sure there probably are plants out there that can utilize EDTA-Iron
>through a foliar route... and probably just as many that cannot... so the
>trick is, figuring out which of your plants can and cannot do this. As
>stated elsewhere the best way really is going to be trying both types
>of products (EDTA vs gluconate) and see which one performs best
>in your system.
A few points:
1) Between leaves, stems, and roots, the basic physiology of plants is is
to
allow the roots to serve as _the_ major nutrient uptake mechanism. I
am
even given pause to consider why it is often suggested to dose
potassium
and magnesium into the water column. And I am challanged to find any
physiological structure in the leaves which aid int the uptake of
nutrients
( exception: stomata take in CO2 ).
2) Much attention is paid to CEC values of substates to underscore
the desirability of getting nutrients _into_ the substrate where they
than
become available to roots. Seachem itself has developed Flourite
(calcined
clay) product in part to achieve this.
3) It is central to algae control rational to keep nutrients out of the
water
column where they will be available to algae more than if some of them
were in the substate. I think the goal is get as much nutrient into
the
substrate as possible. Again I am given pause to consider why potassium
and magnesium are said to be more effectively taken up in the water
column.
These points above and gluconate's weaker bonding capacity of fe++
provided the rational behind my earlier statement that ferrous gluconate has
the potential to preferentially benefit algae.
Christopher Coleman
christopher.coleman at worldnet_att.net