How long does this Iron stay in usable state for my plants? Got to thinking and I usually dose in the morning before work which is roughly 6:30 a.m. My lights come on at 1:30 p.m. So 7 hours later. I also thought I read that only a % of it stays usable at certain ph levels? My ph is around 7.2 with lights off and around 6.8 when lights come on. kh is 7. Would I be better off dosing after work which is usually around 3-5 p.m.?
Hi Zorfox, I just started dosing seachem iron in my planted tank because I see the leaves bleaching but as soon as I dosed, the water became cloudy and it doesn't clear up. I dose 2.5ml in my 12g tank. Is it too much or other reason that make cloudy water? Thanks
It's obviously impossible to say without all the other values from your tank. However, we can safely assume it's a reaction causing precipitation. It seems to happen more with Seachem Iron rather than EDTA or DTPA chelated forms. Seachem uses gluconate as a chelate. With what you now know about chelates, care to make a guess?
My guess would be that the chelate used, gluconate, is too weak leaving the iron vulnerable to reactions, most likely phosphate or calcium reaction. This doesn't make it a bad product. In fact, plants can use the iron easier due to the weak chelate used. So there's a trade off here.
Your dose is not too much. 2.5 ml is one dose of the EI method of fertilizing?. You can try dosing 0.9ml everyday. Lowering the dose may help. If that doesn't help you may need to change to a iron source with a stronger chelate.
All of this is assuming your other parameters are within reasonable levels.
Thank you so much for the information. Would you recommend of putting dry red clay under the substrate?
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