Richard Sexton wrote:

Bonjour Philippe;

Bonjour Richard !


What you want to do is very simple. You need to find out what is in your
tapwater - how much nitrate, how much carbonsate, how much magnesium and
for other chemicals.

Then you need to establish what you want your tank to be. Again, how much
nitrate, phosphate and so on.

Now you buy some Potassium nitrate, Potassium sulphate, Magnesium sulphate,
Potassium monophosphate and an iron and trace elements mix.

Make up stock solutions of them in distilled water.

Now, knowing what your bare tapwater is, and what you want,
you can ad these chemicals one at a time from solution and attain
the levels you want.

I follow you till there and I do it for long !
However, surely due a mistake of mine when I reached 2000 mg/l of K
in my tank, I have difficulties to bring it lower than 60 mg/l
surely due to the fact my trace mix shall contain some K too...

As I have lots of plants, I had only Magnesium nitrate and Calcium nitrate
to feed them in nitrates, raising the GH accordingly !

Now I add Nitric acid diluted at 2%...
And I change 25% of the water each week !
GH and KH slowly go down :-)
Unfortunately not K, so I will limit the trace mix

Which Fe level should be OK ?


Best regards from Canada,

Best regards from Belgium