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Frozen fertilizer cubes.

2K views 14 replies 7 participants last post by  Sotty 
#1 ·
I want a simple way to dose and feed my tanks once a day.

Dosing 4 tanks everyday (soon to be 9 when my 6x10g rack is complete) is a pita.

What if I measured out my daily doses of fertilizer solution into ice cube trays, and froze them. this way I could just grab a cube of NPK or csm+b while I was grabbing frozen foods'and dropped it in the tank?

Is there any reason this is a bad idea?

A plus side to this is that it would keep my fertilizer solutions from molding or growing stuff.


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#2 ·
I don't see any reason that you couldn't do this, but what about making a liquid solution and tailoring it so you would dose a certain amount depending on the size of the tank, I would think it would be quicker than making the ice cubes. You could dose all your tanks in a minute or so. If you want help let me know.
 
#3 ·
My thoughts are you would be putting an abundance of nutrients into each tank by doing this, my advice would be to put NPK macro nutrients in their own cubes, and csm+b into their own separate cubes. This way you can add the NPK cubes on Mon-Weds-Fri, and the csm+b cubes on Tues-Thurs-Sat, leaving Sunday for doing water changes to the tanks.

Because by adding everything into one cube, and dosing it every day you'll end up with a good amount of access nutrients which will result in an algae outbreak.
 
#4 ·
It would probably be just fine, as long as no one mistook the ice cubes for edible.

I find it really easy to dose, though. Probably no longer than it takes to grab the right ice cubes. I mix up a big enough batch of macros or micros (separate bottles, of course) and dose X ml of solution per gallon of tank size. I can dose 2 dozen tanks really fast.
 
#8 ·
I have quite a few tanks to dose as well, what I find most efficient is to make an autodoser. premixed ferts in a bucket and a small pump on timer that turns on 15 minutes/day. refill bucket once/week or however much you need.

just make sure to get a small enough pump and measure how much the pumps dump into your tank before you mix your bucket of ferts
 
#10 ·
If you want fast convenient liquid dosing for multiple tanks consider going with a pump bottle (like an empty lotion bottle or by a larger one off of amazon).

Measure how many mL per squirt.

Then do the math to mix up separate NPK and micro solutions so you get the desired ferts concentration using 1 squirt per 5 gallon of tank volume.

That way you have two bottles, and no other equipment to worry about.

I personally dose dry as my tanks are larger but when I asked a couple months back, several people mentioned this and it seemed a good solution for dosing smaller tanks.
 
#12 ·
You can always increase the concentration of your solutions so that one squirt is good for (say) 20 gallons, etc.

Of course, you have to keep in mind the solubility of all the chemicals you are adding...
 
#14 ·
That is what I thought. You would have to make up the solution before you freeze it. The freezing is not a problem, but then you have to walk around with freezing fingers to dose. 1 cube for the smallest tank, multiple cubes for the larger tanks.

If you already have the solution, you are going to mix it to make ice cubes, I just use a syringe (no needle) and dose all the tanks based on their size. One syringe barrel holds enough for several of the medium sized tanks or all the little tanks. The larger tanks take one or more syringes. But it is all really fast.
 
#15 ·
and 50 squirts of a lotion bottle takes... 50 seconds lol. Not to bad in my opinion, and at least to me, better than having to deal with pumps or ice cube trays.

Granted this is not how I would dose for one or two large aquariums, that would be silly. Dry with scoops is the way to go then without a question. but that is tough with 10g's so two squirts for NPK and micros a day or every other day depending on how you decide to do it is pretty efficient and reasonable.

I would consider the dosing pump if you have a centralized filter (therefore one body of water, but then you could just dose dry)
 
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