Unsure of my dosing.

[Booswalia]

Hi,

My 25G tall tank has been up and running for about 10 days now and I'm wondering if I'm headed in the right direction.

I have 80 watts of fluorescent light, soon to be 110 watts with about 75% planted mostly with stem plants in 100% Flourite. One SAE one sailfin molly and one small pleco being fed VERY little.

I've been dosing the following:
.5ml of Flourish twice a week
2ml of Flourish Iron twice a week
1ml of Flourish Phosphorus twice a week
2ml of Flourish Potasium 3 times a week
My water from the tap has about 7ppm of nitrates in it and tests show about 10ppm most of the time in the tank.

Weekly water change of about 1/3.

DIY C02 connected to my underwater filter.

Growth is slow and I don't have any pearling yet.

My Iron test kit never seems to indicate that there's any iron. (Could be the kit.)

Any suggestions that would steer me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Shirley

[Starry]

This is just a suggestion about your iron test kit - if it doesn't show any iron, add a drop or two of flourish iron to the test tube when you do your test, and see if it changes colour. I was wondering the same thing about my phosphate test kit, and then confirmed that it did work by adding flourish phosphate to the test tube.

[Booswalia]

Good idea Starry. Think I'll try that with my phosphate kit too.

Thanks.