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Old 22-07-2003, 03:33 PM
Sam Hopkins
 
Posts: n/a
Default Yellowing Water Lettuce Emergency

You dont want to use that. There's trace mix from a company called Bonide
that nurseries carry that I use to make my own fert. You want .1PPM of iron
in the water at all times. Here's a response to a aquarium person that I
posted to another group on how to figure out how much to add:

Look on the label that contains how much iron it has to figure out what
numbers to use:

For 72 gallons you'd use this formula I'll assume the percent of iron in
your trace (check the package) is 5%.

72 X 3.785 = 272.52

1000 / 272.52 = 3.66 (this is how many PPM 1 gram of 100% pure chemical
would bring your 72 gallons to if you added it)

..05 (percent of iron) X 3.66 = 0.183 (Since you don't have 100% pure
chemical you multiply the 3.66 by the percentage of iron)

So if you added one gram of your trace and the iron was 5% and you had 72
gallons of water your iron level would be .183 PPM. This is too high. You
want around .1PPM so you'd use 1/2 gram to get you to .09 PPM which is close
enough.

Can't measure 1/2 gram? How about 1 ounce? Do this:

Add one ounce (28.34 grams) of trace to 1 liter (1000 ML) of water. Each ML
of solution would deliver .02834 grams of mixture. So you'd need to add 18
ML of this to your water to get to .1PPM of iron. Go to the pet store and
find the bird section. They have little syringes that count MLs. I think
Tetra makes them. They are used to feed baby birds, etc.

The hard part is going to know how fast your plants are using your iron up
so you know what to dose the next time. You'll need an iron test kit for
this unfortunately. =(



"NJ" wrote in message
...
Hi, everyone...

I posted yesterday regarding my water lettuce turning yellow with amazing
speed in an otherwise healthy pond. I am under the gun because of our pond
being part of a tour this weekend. I was looking into using PondCare's
"Aquatic Plant Stimulant" after researching on the 'net and reading that a
depletion of trace elements might be the culprit. A quick call to a local
pond center put me on to Ironite, a fertilizer that I already have on hand
for evergreens. Has anyone here ever used it?

NJ