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Adding iron & trace elements
Here in the UK I have 4000 gallon (18000l) pond stocked with goldfish &
orfe. It is very rarely clear, it almost made it briefly in March, and as usual has been pretty murky since. I have a couple of filter boxes shifting 1800g/hr, which are very effective biologically, ammonia & nitrite never measure anything other than zero. There's also a 2x9W UVC. There's a good selection of marginal plants & lilies, and I got some WH's last week. In previous years I've tried adding potash (a product called LoSalt, 66% KCl, 33% NaCl), which helps a bit, but didn't really clear the pond. The plants all seem to be lacking in the vigour one expects of aquatics. I finally got some time to look into the details, re-read loads of notes taken from this news group and the 'net over the years, and decided to check if I had some other limiting nutrient to plant growth. PO4 measures ~0.5ppm, Nitrate ~3ppm. Plant behaviour hinted at iron problems, so I got an iron test kit, which confirmed absolutely zero free iron, zero chelated iron. As the pond is generally topped up by rain water, I also suspect other trace elements may be zero too. So I bought a box TE, the contents of which a Boron 0.1% Copper 0.25% Iron chelated EDTA 3.3% Magnesium 7% Manganese 3% Molybdenum 0.005% Zinc 1% So the question to any experts out there is, 1) Are any of those TE's a problem / toxic to fish at these levels? 2) Recommended dose rate, I've been working to 0.1ppm iron, although the test kit suggests 0.25-0.5ppm for chelated iron. Whatever I add is back to zero the next day. If I want to add iron only, is FeS04 any good? (I suspect it just precipitates out straight away?) Or do I need to get some chelated iron and keep dosing until the level stabalises? Other parameters are pH=8.0 rock steady, KH=100ppm, GH=120ppm, salt=0.03% (I've moved away from salt dosing in general, all the fish are happy & healthy without) Cheers -- steve |
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