Macronutrient mix source?

[Lenbok]

Hi guys,

Last time I made my macronutrient mix (based on the Sears/Conlin approach) I used chemicals that I was able to get via the University chemistry dept. But now I'm no longer at Uni I need to find another source for the suitable chemicals.

Any pointers (either for raw chemicals / recipes / premixed) gratefully recieved...

(My micronutrient mix, on the other hand, should last me for another 5 years :-))

Cheers,

Len.

[cees]

Otaki hydroponics will courier to your home address.

http://www.otakihydroponics.co.nz/

I'm not sure where you are Len. It's a nice shop to visit 40 minutes north of Wellington. But I'm sure if you give them a call and tell them what you need they'll weigh it out for you and send it by courier.

They sell hydroponics mixtures as well as the individual chemicals.

Just tell them you need a kilo each of potassium sulphate, potassium nitrate and magnesium sulphate you'll be right.

potassium sulphate is available at garden centers and so is magnesium sulphate (epsom salt) don't know about potassium nitrate. I'd go to otaki hydroponics anyway, better deal for sure.

Cees

[Ira]

Potassium nitrate is available at garden centers. What I've got is in a small 500 gram white container labeled stump rotter. About $7.25. I've been using a mixture of a chelated trace elements mix, epsom salt and chelated iron. Can't really objectively say if it helps, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt.

[ajbroome]

Len said...

> I need to find another source for the suitable chemicals

and Cees said...

> Otaki hydroponics will courier to your home address.

> http://www.otakihydroponics.co.nz/

If you get here early enough on Friday Len, we could go check

this place out (it's about an hour south of here, not sure you'd

want to do more driving though after 4hrs cooped up in a car

already - perhaps with a quick stop at Mr Eds on the way

back... or maybe early saturday morning if any are up to it?

Looks like Ric/Bruce/Lawrence may be in town for Friday night

so who know... ;-)

There's also reported to be a hydroponics place just outside of

PN so maybe we could check that out. I've never been there

but how hard can it be to find? I think Peter knows where it

is...

Andrew.

[cees]

There's also reported to be a hydroponics place just outside of

PN so maybe we could check that out. I've never been there

There are a few more in the Wellington area, one in Upper Hutt not far from where I live. However, Otaki is the only one I've seen that supplies 'raw chemicals' as well as standard nutrient mixes.

[Ira]

Yeah, not much at the one in Upper Hutt. Better off going to a garden center, as far as fertilizers and things the garden center in the same area has basically the same things.(And cause it's run by relatives I get stuff at cost:))

[Warren]

I get all my chemicals from the local bulk chemical supplier. Some pool centers have most of them too.

If you get really stuck, I could get them for you from the local supplier and courier to you. Most containers are 2kg and cost between $10-20 depending on what chemical.

[Paul]

You should just pop over to Feiding Andrew.

Local hydroponics why travel lol the owner is new but he has all you or anybody else would want, just tell him what you need he should be able to sort it out.

[ajbroome]

Paul said...

> You should just pop over to Feiding Andrew.

> Local hydroponics why travel lol ...

You'll see in my original message that I said there was

one just outside of Palmerston North, the 'Feilding' one

is the one I meant.

Len *may* want to go to Otaki since a mutual friend

lives in Levin, you see.

BTW Paul, my new house is just around the corner from

your old Vogel St shop...

Andrew.

[Lenbok]

Len *may* want to go to Otaki since a mutual friend

lives in Levin, you see.

Well, I did a quick ring around a few places in Hamilton. Most chemical places didn't want to sell anything less than 25kg bags at a time :-).

I found a garden center that actually had all the raw ingredients (although they called them funny names like potash, nitrate and magnesium ;-)). K[2]SO[4] was $3/kg, KNO[3] was $4/kg, and MgSO[4] was also $4/kg, so I got $20 worth of chemicals should keep me going for another few years...

Cheers,

Len.

[Ira]

What's the recipe you use?

[Warren]

Go to the Technical Section / Useful Links Page. There you will find a link to the Sears-Colin report. You should know this Ira because the link says you found it!

Use their recipe, its a great starting point. My recipe is very similar. Its pointless me giving you my recipe because I've made small changes to suit my setup is all. For the chelated trace element mix, I use Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Aquatic Plant Stimulant. It contains all the trace elements in similar % quantities to the report. How to work out how much to use is easy. Work out how much fertiliser you will add daily to your tank. Divide the total amount of fertiliser you are going to make by this amount. This tells you how many days supply you are making. Look at the Aquatic Plant Stimulant directions and it will tell you how much to add and how often. From this you can work out how much Aquatic Plant Stimulant to add to the fertiliser mix.

eg if you add 50ml every 2 weeks and you are making enough fertiliser to last 4 weeks, you add 100ml.

You will need to subtract this amount of water from the fertiliser mix or else you will end up with more.

[cees]

For the chelated trace element mix, I use Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Aquatic Plant Stimulant.

I use (or did use when I still had my planted tank, where did that one go? ) my hydroponics mix. A few hunderd gram cost me less then $10 at, you guessed it Otaki. Will last me a lifetime .

[Ira]

Has anyone tested the PH of their mix? Mine ends up about 2.4 which is low enough to throw off the tanks. When I add baking soda to bring the PH up it foams like mad. Unfortunately turns it a nasty green color instead of the yellow it starts off as. I don't know what component is making the PH that low, or if everyone else's comes out about the same.

[Warren]

Don't worry about the pH. You are adding such a tiny amount of the mix that it won't effect your tanks pH. If you never do water changes then the tank pH will slowly drop. You can add the baking soda to the tank. First dissolve it in lots of water. I use approx 1 Litre per teaspoon. The Baking Soda mixed with water then gets added slowly using some fine tubing. It takes about 1 hour to drain into the tank. This stops the fish getting pH shocked!

[Ira]

Actually, I've found it DOES have a significant effect on the PH. Oddly only in one tank, though, I guess because the rest are tending towards 7+ PH. In a different thread, can't remember which thread, I posted about it that making a guesstimate at the rate I'm putting it in, scaling up from a test in a bucket that it would drop the PH from 7 to about 6.2 within a week before a water change(50% weekly) and would keep dropping after that. That's far from what I'd call no effect. I'm trying to adjust the mix that's causing the PH drop because I'm getting sick of testing and adjusting the PH two or three times a week. I've been using about 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda mixed in a glass of water every few days. This only raises the PH by .2, which I'm not worried about causing shock.

[Warren]

You may have no buffering capacity in that tank. Check your KH and GH, also your NO3 level. If the KH and/or GH are low (below 2dH (30ppm)) and/or your NO3 is high (>40ppm), this will help cause the pH to crash. Try not adding the fertiliser for a week and I bet the pH still falls. The plants won't care for a week and the algae won't get a hold either. Give it a try.

Do you have a log that is leaking lots of humic acids??

I'd look for something other than the fertiliser. If it works ok in other tanks then its obviously not the problem.

[ajbroome]

Ira,

Aren't you using straight rainwater? This suggests you'll

have no buffering capacity in your water and it'll be prone

to wild pH shifts with minimal change in chemistry.

There are ways of dealing with this...

Andrew.

[Ira]

Yeah, I'm using rainwater, so very little buffering. I know it's prone to easy PH changes. Which is why I'm trying to minimize the PH change caused by the fertilizer mix.

There aren't any really big pieces of driftwood in the tank. But all the pieces in there have been in different tanks for at least a few years so they shouldn't be leaking any humic acids, tanins, etc. Last time I checked the nitrates were about 40ish. But before I started adding the fertilizer the tank was happily sitting around 6.9. Well, I should say the old 200 liter tank was and except for the addition of a bit of substrate everything in the old tank was transfered to the new 400 liter.

[ajbroome]

Ira said...

> Yeah, I'm using rainwater, so very little buffering.

Can you tell me why you're using rain water?

It often causes more trouble than it's worth for most

applications. Of course, some people don't have the

option but if that were the case for me then I'd look

at using some sort of mineral suppliment which are

commercially available...

Andrew.

[Pegasus]

Not disputing anyones words, but all the lakes and rivers are filled with the wet stuff from the heavens :)

Treating rainwater is less problems than treating city water which can have GK'sW in it. JMHO

[ajbroome]

Pegasus said...

> ... but all the lakes and rivers are filled with the wet stuff

> from the heavens

Yes, even acid blackwater streams in the Amazon and alkaline

rift lakes in east Africa, not to mention the sea. This has little

bearing on what the water chemistry is where the fish actually live.

> Treating rainwater is less problems than treating city water

> which can have GK'sW in it.

Obviously, I disagree. To over-generalise, for 99% of the fish

that 99% of us keep, 99% of tap water is more than suitable.

That which isn't is generally too hard and/or too alkaline in which

case dilution with rain (or RO) water will often help. In the odd

case where tap water is lacking in mineral content, filtration over

shell grit or limestone can sort that out.

Bear in mind that almost all the fish we get have never seen

their native waters and as such are pre-adapted to life in

captivity and the water chemistry this entails (a lot of the tap

water is the same the world over due to health and reticulation

requirements - although obviously there are exceptions).

I firmly believe in not making life harder for myself than it

needs to be.

Andrew, as Pegagus says, JMHO. YMMV.

[Ira]

AJ, I'm using rainwater because my house is supplied by rainwater. So, don't really have the option. If I wasn't trying to grow plants then the rainwater would be fine. Unfortunately the plants seem to need some kind of added fertilizer to grow. When my last batch ran out I didn't get around to making another batch for a few days then decided to wait 2 weeks to see how the plants would react. In each tank the plants seemed to almost immediately stop growing and within 1 week there was a noticable growth of algae on the plants. In 2 weeks the plants in the tank my killies are in were covered with enough algae that when I started adding the fertilizer again it was too late, they were all basically dead. Had to tear all the plants out and use some of what I learned at the last UHAS meeting, hehe. All the plants are now basically just a couple rows of sticks poking out of the substrate, but they're coming back.

I have looked at buying some commercial fertilizer, it's been a little while and I can't remember the exact cost, but it came out to something like $40 a month to dose all my tanks and it would be more now since I got a new tank. That was from prices at Animates so I could probably find it cheaper somewhere else.

[Pegasus]

Hi AJ,

I too am on tank water, but by choice, as we have been for at least the past 17yrs.

I like the rainwater, ... I drink it, and keep my fish in it, and we all have our own thoughts on this matter, and I don't want to dispute anything that you or others say on the matter, but just have a think about the bottled water industry that was once worth many millions, but is now worth thousands of BILLIONS. (or is it Trillions )

People in general don't trust the water from the tap like they used to, not just in NZ, but worldwide.

Regards,

Bill (Pegasus)

[ajbroome]

Ira said...

> I'm using rainwater because my house is supplied by rainwater.

> So, don't really have the option.

That's fair enough then.

> If I wasn't trying to grow plants then the rainwater would be fine.

I tend to disagree, but that's OK.

> Unfortunately the plants seem to need some kind of added

> fertilizer to grow.

Well, rainwater by definition is very low in nutrients which is why

I use it for my carnivorous plants.

Anyway, go with what works for you. As far as I can see, as long

as you use un-modified rainwater you're going to have 'issues'

with regard to pH swings regardless of if you're keeping fish

or plants or combinations there-of.

Andrew.