Iron Toxicity?

[Detritus Mulm]

I dose my big (55g) with a couple of dosing pumps, one for Traces and one for ferts. This is a minor problem for Traces, as they settle out and eventually clog up the tubing. I replaced the tubing the other day and turned the pump on to get the air out. Problem is that I forgot to turn it off again. I'm not sure how much was in the bottle, as it also gets clouded over. But it must have been at least half full, which equates to at least 5 grams of Traces or 5+ PPM of Iron in the tank. I noticed the pump was still running today when I did my WC and realized what had happened. Did the WC expecting the worst, but did not find any casualties, Shrimp or Snails. I tested the Iron today and it came out very close to zero. (I'll have to check the Test Kit)

I did have a lot of pruning to do though, the Ludwigia is growing like it used to and the Sword was taking over the tank again. I guess I'm not dosing enough Traces. :-)

One odd thing though, the Ammonia checker is reading at a low level, whereas it's normally zero?

[Biollante]

Hi,

You are a long way from iron toxicity levels for your critters. I routinely dose much higher than that. Even in the ‘normal’ tanks, I dose over 2 ppm iron.

I have been studying Echinodorus spp. and have found it difficult to outpace the demand for iron, Tom Barr tells me it is not that they demand more than other plants, just that when they get rolling, they are substantial plants.

A small ammonia spike, without critter casualties, after a big trim would not cause me much concern in a heavily planted tank.

Yes I would increase the micros drastically.

Biollante

[Detritus Mulm]

Hi,

You are a long way from iron toxicity levels for your critters. I routinely dose much higher than that. Even in the ‘normal’ tanks, I dose over 2 ppm iron.

I have been studying Echinodorus spp. and have found it difficult to outpace the demand for iron, Tom Barr tells me it is not that they demand more than other plants, just that when they get rolling, they are substantial plants.

A small ammonia spike, without critter casualties, after a big trim would not cause me much concern in a heavily planted tank.

Yes I would increase the micros drastically.

Biollante

Yeah, it's been rollin for a few years, but every once in a while it goes Rawhide.

[Tom Barr]

I've seen very different ppm's for different Fe sources, eg Chelation allows us to add a lot more metals without the same effect, plant uptake also allows a lot.

I think the only real way to tell as far as critters, take an autopsy, take each organ and measure the amount of Fe that was actually ingested, take up, diffused into the organism for verification after mortality occurs.
Then you know WHERE and HOW MUCH and what species was affected.

This could be done for Fe, Fe -ETDA, Fe gluconate, DTPAQ etc and at different KH's.'

But otherwise, most folks screw something up, or mess with things to see how far they push things.

I've never been able to harm any critter with Fe.
Same for plants, most ranges go to 2-8ppm for Fe, even 8ppm will help plants grow very well, 6ppm was the best as far Hydrilla, one of few aquatic plants to have Fe studies done on it.
So there's not that much know, however, plenty of evidence that suggest it's not a likely issue for us relative to common mistakes and effective ranges of dosing for aquatic aquarium plants and critters.

Spreading fear is a common knee jerk response on many forums to "excess", when in fact, they simply do not know the answer.
Just say you do not know versus fear mongering.

Many seem to want to come off with some BS, which does no good for the hobby, nor adds any real information.
Look up the key words for any research that has been done.
Ask yourself, does the claim make sense in terms of what you and others have seen?

Would it make sense to you if you had dosed say 100mls of Trace mix into a 30 Gallon tank with no ill effects on shrimp?

Not likely.

So would that "support or dispute" the "excess" claims?
Those types of things can rule out some of BS that goes on really quick.
However, it still does not answer how much it takes to kill a fish, or fry a plant.

That still remains unknown, but we do now have an idea of the user range that has little issue.



Regards,
Tom Barr