Liquid Ferts, Dosage and days to implement?? Help!

[romaric]

Hi all! Im a newbie and I've just finish a little over two weeks on my first tank:
the living aquascape


It's a 20 gl long, 65 watts of lights on, 10 hours a day.
DIY C02; Hagen Ladder. I have 8 species of plants at the moment, and 10 cherry barbs and 4 gouramis.

I think I need to get on a normal schedule of adding ferts, time when lights are on, and water change...

I have Flourish Iron and Potassium for ferts. I only use these two, and would love advice on adding just these two ferts.

What is your recommended dosage, and how many times per week?

I do a tank flush, 30% of water every sunday. Adding ferts after that.

Thanks for your help! Anything you can tell me concerning dosage and times per week would really help!

cheers!

[Hoppy]

Welcome to AquaScaping World! That is a beautiful tank you have started and very good photography.

You seem to have done one thing very well - you planted heavily from the start. With that much light those plants will be trying to grow rapidly, so they need the nutrients to be able to do so. Since carbon is the most needed nutrient, CO2 is the most important "fertilizer" - I suggest using two DIY bottles, staggering the start times, to try to get a more consistent level of CO2 in the water.

The problem is that nitrogen is the next most important fertilizer, and you would like not to dose that. If you had less light the fish poop and excess fish food could possibly supply enough, but with the light you have you should be dosing nitrates. Potassium, you have covered. But, the plants can't use the other nutrients if they don't also get phosphorous - phosphates. So, you do need to dose phosphates.

You can get Flourish nitrogen and Flourish phosphorous to add to what you have. Or you can save money by ordering potassium nitrate (for potassium and nitrate) and mono potassium phosphate (for phosphate) from either Fertilizers For The Planted Tank | Ferts or Planted Aquarium Fertilizer. Start dosing a complete menu of nutrients and your tank will be as beautiful as it should be.

[John N.]

Welcome to AquaScaping World! You have a beautiful tank after only two weeks of planting.

I second increasing your DIY CO2 output, or at least supplement with Seachem Excel. This will save you alot of heads with algae later on. As mentioned previously Seachem Flourish Iron, and Seachem Potassium need a balance of Nitrogen, and Phosphates to create a completely healthy tank. However to answer your direct question about how to dose Iron and Potassium for your tank, I refer you to Seachem's suggested dosing.



Dry ferts will run cheaper in than purchasing a stock of liquid fertilizers. From the links Hoppy gave you above, I recommend purchasing and dosing the following when you run out of liquid fertilizers

1/4 tsp KNO3 2x a week
1/16 tsp KH2PO4 2x a week
1/16 tsp K2SO4 2x a week
1/16 tsp traces 2x a week

I reduced the dosage from 3x a week to 2x because from the photos from your site, your plants look healthy without any major deficiencies (yet). Following this dosing scheme for the dry ferts is more or less the same as Seachem's dosing schedule.

Is there are reason why you are only wanting to dose Iron and Potassium?

-John N.

[romaric]

Thanks John!

No, no reason with only those two ferts. basically, just going with what the guy at the store told me.

I'll look into dry ferts, too.

Thanks!

[Pat7676]

Dry ferts is so much cheeper than liquid dosing. I learned that really fast. Much cleaner too.

[John N.]

Originally Posted by romaric

No, no reason with only those two ferts. basically, just going with what the guy at the store told me.

One thing you'll learn as you go through the hobby..never trust exactly the information you get from your local fish store. Always look for collaborative info to get the complete story, and cheaper (better) alternative options.

-John N.

[Left C]

If anyone is interested; here's a Microsoft Excel Seachem Dosing Calculator based on the Seachem Dosing Chart that John N. is showing in post #3:
Seachem Dosing Calculator/Chart - Science of Aquatic Fertilizing - Aquatic Plant Central