Iron dosing. Cant seem add enough Iron

[jbyoung00008]

Hey everyone. I have a question about dosing my tank with Iron. I have been addidng 2 cap fulls of Seachem Iron to my 25g tank daily for the past 1.5 weeks and still I cant bring the iron content up in my water. I want it around 0.4. Its usually around 0.1 My tank has been running for over a year. It is very heavily planted I added C02 4 months ago. I have 7wpg. It seems like I need to add the whole bottle of Iron just to see an increase. Anyone ever have an issue like this before???

[neven]

i would recommend getting your hands on some bulk csm+b and using that for your trace, the iron will be sufficent then

[jbyoung00008]

Thanks for the suggestion. Any reasoning behind using that product? I have done some research on it but there really isnt that much info on it. Does anyone sell it out here in BC. Anybody else have any ideas?

[neven]

seachem's iron is not chelated, whereas almost every other iron source in ferts is. Chelated allows for a slow break down of the iron. When the iron is not chelated it breaks down rather quickly in the tank (i've heard 3-4 hours).

Now if your plants are doing fine, dont worry about it, however if they are showing signs of iron deficiency something else may be happening. When you go above a medium light set up its a lot easier to have a deficiency caused by an excess of another nutrient. In iron's case, phosphorus and potassium in excess could cause an iron deficiency.

translation in EI dose terms, If you upped the macro dosages due to higher lighting, the micros must be upped as well, or plant stunting amongst other things will likely happen. Macros drive the growth, micros keep the plant growing healthy.


if there are no symptoms, do not worry about it. I know some people dose CSM+B and flourish iron so theres an iron boost + the chelated form in the tank ready to break down. These people have excessive lighting though.

as for a source, i think canadian aquatics sell it, i know they carry other ferts.

[verkion]

I use Tailored Aquatics Amazon Iron 2-3x per week to supplement iron. Trace I use Flourish for now (have a huge bottle of it) but will switch over to CSM+B later. Macro is well, the standard three in dry form. I supplement iron because it seems to help with a) color and b) strength of plants. Is it really needed? Meh, probably not.

Thanks!
verkion