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Plant deficiencies and the Fe Experiment

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keef321 said:
Standard Fe chelate is EDTA. Then as the PH increases you move onto DTPA, then higher PH again EDDHA etc.
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You wrote that you switched to 50% osmosis water and therefore reduced the dosage, but this led to chlorosis. Have you solved this question somehow?
 
Wookii said:
0.5dKH is plenty - if you dose plenty of PO4 you might not even need that - I run zero dKH in all my RO tanks, even the CO2 injected ones.
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Do you mean the phosphate buffer? Can you tell us more about it?
 
MiZubov said:
You wrote that you switched to 50% osmosis water and therefore reduced the dosage, but this led to chlorosis. Have you solved this question somehow?
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I was happy with my results in my hard water & relatively high PH tank, using the mixture of chelated iron and manganese , together with full EI dosing. I had to keep too plants that’s worked in my hard water.

I wanted to try other plants out and see what it was like growing plants in softer water. So far good, but I have learnt that the PH drop is not linear in nature, unlike GH. For example tap water with GH 10 mixed with 50% RO = GH5. A PH of 8 though, would not go to 7.5. Due to this my PH has not lowered as much as I would have liked, so did experience some suspect issues due to reducing iron. It’s still very early days to have any full conclusions, as my 50% RO tank is only couple of months old.
 
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keef321 said:
I was happy with my results in my hard water & relatively high PH tank, using the mixture of chelated iron and manganese , together with full EI dosing. I had to keep too plants that’s worked in my hard water.

I wanted to try other plants out and see what it was like growing plants in softer water. So far good, but I have learnt that the PH drop is not linear in nature, unlike GH. For example tap water with GH 10 mixed with 50% RO = GH5. A PH of 8 though, would not go to 7.5. Due to this my PH has not lowered as much as I would have liked, so did experience some suspect issues due to reducing iron. It’s still very early days to have any full conclusions, as my 50% RO tank is only couple of months old.
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I went from 50% to 30% before a large (ish) ph drop, due to drop in kh
My tapwater NW Kent sounds similar to yours
 
fredi said:
I went from 50% to 30% before a large (ish) ph drop, due to drop in kh
My tapwater NW Kent sounds similar to yours
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Interesting Fredi, do you mean that you eventually went to 80% RO 20% Tap? I have thought about increasing my RO %
 
keef321 said:
Interesting Fredi, do you mean that you eventually went to 80% RO 20% Tap? I have thought about increasing my RO %
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I am using 30% tapwater
Have been for a year or so, I add Mg, and occasionally Fe
Edited to say
Mine is a fishtank with plants rather than a planted tank
 
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fredi said:
I am using 30% tapwater
Have been for a year or so, I add Mg, and occasionally Fe
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Would be interested to know how much it brought your PH down by? At that % I would have a nice mix, with KH of around 2.4 and GH 5, so should still be good for my shrimp and fish, and plants 😀
 
keef321 said:
Would be interested to know how much it brought your PH down by? At that % I would have a nice mix, with KH of around 2.4 and GH 5, so should still be good for my shrimp and fish, and plants 😀
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My Ph is currently around 6.5
My Gh and Kh is similar to your projected values, last time I chucked, pH is constantly monitored, I don’t check other parameters often
But will have a “look”
 
Hufsa said:
You can mix all three in one solution, but only if you use some form of acid to lower the ph to where it needs to be. White vinegar works quite well.
Dont bother checking the ph of the RO water, its almost pure water so the ph there is not stable and mostly meaningless.
But once you have the salts in (like Fe EDDHA and Fe DTPA) you should be checking the ph and bringing it down to a lower level by adding acid.
Only then could you add some Seachem Iron into this mix.

The ph of the fertilizer only needs to be low if you want to have Seachem Iron in it (in your case), ok?
The chelates are stable from ph 4 up to like 7.5 - 10.
Seachem Iron is a liquid solution of Fe Gluconate.

This is from my notes when I was looking into this for my own mixes:

Fe Gluc pH 3.5 - 4.5 <- Seachem Iron
Fe EDDHA pH 3 - 10
Fe DTPA pH 4.0 – 7.5

As you can see the Gluconate version of Fe doesnt want to be stored in a solution higher than ph 4.5.
This is because it might "let go" of the iron and become ineffective.
But the Fe DTPA doesnt want to go lower than ph 4 for storage.
So thats what gives us the 4 - 4.5 ph target range, that we need to stay in if all three of these are going to be in the same bottle.

Does that make sense?
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Hi @Hufsa… what about Fe+Micros all EDTA?? + fE EDDHA? What ph do you recommend for storage?
 
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