have FW planted tank nutrients, how to dose in fuge?

[houser]

I have a few month old 10G fuge with basically nothing in it. This fuge is not connected to any system right now (I'm basically Q'ing my fuge before I connect it). Some chaeto, some caluerpa, loads of pods, some flatworms (ah - that's why I'm Q'ing), and a few snails.

I'm obviously running low on nutrients as I'm seeing symptoms such as pale and reduced growth across both the chaeto and caluerpa.

I have planted tanks that experience lush growth - due to CO2, nutrient dosing, and my green thumb! KNO3, K2SO4, etc.... I'm thinking about adding some of it to my fuge to sustain/boost growth.

Any simple formulas for home-grown fertilizer? I'm an EI guy in the FW world (quite comfortable with those concepts)

Thanks, Dave

[graveyardworm]

Check out the sticky at the top of this forum, "Old favorites" or something like that. You'll find that keeping marine planted tanks is still in its infancy so there's alot of experimenting going on, but things are begining to click, you'll find recipes for mixing KNO3, and dosing CO2. Iron dosing is there as well.

[houser]

Dropped in some KNO3 this morning before work shooting for the "recommended" ppm. I did catch that sticky late last night. Went ahead and posted anyway.

I know to go slow. So I will watch. Sort of exciting dosing my SW tank, hope it goes well.

And did want to point out that although I'm an EIer, I'm not looking for those frequency of water changes on this fuge!!!!

[Samala]

We dont dose micronutrients (other than the arguable iron) for now. I'm hoping there is enough of the micro's available in a typical salt water mix to support macroalgae via water changes. We still do water changes of course, about 10% a week is right for me. (Or 25% if I let it go two weeks, but that's rare.) However, I have a relatively small tank.

The nitrate dosing thread should help you out some. Mix up a known quantity of KNO3 dry into RO water and you're set. Since you know FW and EI, this should be cake for you to learn and adopt.

We dont have a comprehensive dosing method for saltwater tanks like EI. I try to maintain a 0.1 ppm PO4 and 3-5ppm NO3 in my tank along with stable pH and alkalinity values.

I'm glad to have you aboard and have another person interested in dabbling in and experimenting with their systems.

>Sarah

[graveyardworm]

I've been dosing micronutrients (Kents Essential Elements). Also KNO3, Iron, Iodine. Unfortunately there's no way for testing the micronutrients so I'm dosing per Kents instructions. I also have a large system which probably uses up stuff faster than most, and faster than I can replenish with water changes, but again this is unknown.

[Nano_reeflover]

Is the Kent stuff the only packaged stuff that is known to be good for dosing in our tanks?

OT: Samala, have you read my PM?

[graveyardworm]

Is the Kent stuff the only packaged stuff that is known to be good for dosing in our tanks?

Nope

[houser]

Holy smokes. Almost instant GROWTH!

I failed to omit that I was so nutrient-deprived that the caluerpa was nothing more than an extensive root/runner system (all the leaves had withered away over about a month) Since the root/runner system looked healthy I figured I'd just leave it. I left it that way for a good 3 weeks.

Within 48 hours of adding the KNO3 I literally had hundreds of new leaf buds popping up. I would estimate the growth rate parallels that of a fuge connected to the main system, say 1/4" a day or so per leaf.

So now the caluerpa is storming back with a vengance. I'm going to keep playing around and try to dose based on growth rate and see what happens.

[houser]

I didn't mention that I was essentially trying to sustain this tank off water changes (w/RODI) and just the input from the 3 snails and whatever else was growing in there. After a 2 month test, I was pretty sure the nutrient levels were the real culprit.