I have been noticing that when I dose CSM+B, and sometimes K2SO4 my aquarium water looks a bit cloudy for a day. I'm wondering what's going on. I've been reading a few things here about iron and maybe some other stuff precipitating when exposed to UV and after catching something interesting while testing my aquarium water yesterday I'm really curious.
I have a 70~80gal tank. I run a strong UV light for my system. 25w with flow throttled back to 2gpm to completely sterilize my water of even the toughest critters like viruses.
After neglecting my plants for a month or so I've gotten back on the wagon with fertilizing and testing my water in prep for adding pressurized CO2 soon. The first time I tested my water everything was out of whack- high nitrates, high phosphates, almost zero iron, and although I have the reagents, I haven't calibrated my photospectrometer to test potassium levels yet but I think I'll be doing that shortly.
So I dosed good & heavy with CSM+B and K2SO4 to get the nutrient levels balanced out, and then added as much Excel and Axis as I dared. The next day I tested the water again and got nearly zero iron again. This shouldn't be. I dosed for a target of .5ppm and I've never seen my plants take up that much iron in a day before. So this time I unplugged the UV light and dosed iron, excel and axis again. Only this time I noticed I didn't get the usual cloudy water and when I tested the water the next morning I had a solid iron residual. I plugged the UV back in and I'll test again later today to see if my suspicions are correct about the UV killing my iron levels.
Which leads me to my questions:
J
I have a 70~80gal tank. I run a strong UV light for my system. 25w with flow throttled back to 2gpm to completely sterilize my water of even the toughest critters like viruses.
After neglecting my plants for a month or so I've gotten back on the wagon with fertilizing and testing my water in prep for adding pressurized CO2 soon. The first time I tested my water everything was out of whack- high nitrates, high phosphates, almost zero iron, and although I have the reagents, I haven't calibrated my photospectrometer to test potassium levels yet but I think I'll be doing that shortly.
So I dosed good & heavy with CSM+B and K2SO4 to get the nutrient levels balanced out, and then added as much Excel and Axis as I dared. The next day I tested the water again and got nearly zero iron again. This shouldn't be. I dosed for a target of .5ppm and I've never seen my plants take up that much iron in a day before. So this time I unplugged the UV light and dosed iron, excel and axis again. Only this time I noticed I didn't get the usual cloudy water and when I tested the water the next morning I had a solid iron residual. I plugged the UV back in and I'll test again later today to see if my suspicions are correct about the UV killing my iron levels.
Which leads me to my questions:
- Is this a known phenomenon, that UV causes Iron to precipitate?
- When iron precipitates is it removed from the water column?
- If it is removed from the water column, is it in the filter or the substrate?
- If it is in the substrate, is it in a form bio-available to the plants?
- Is there a better source of iron then CSM+B that is more stable under UV?
- Does K2SO4 react the same way?
J