Micronutrient fertilizer levels

[MyShrimpDied]

My question is: When you use micronutrients to fertilize your plants, is it important to have even levels of all three supplements (Magnesium, carbon, iron)? For example, if i added something to the tank that supplied it with Iron and i didnt supply it with magnesium or carbon, will it hurt the plants? or is it a more nutrients the better?

~ MyShrimpDied

 

[djlen]

You can get most of the micros you'll need from Flourish....not Flourish Trace....just plain Flourish, dosing once or twice a week.
Adding Fe is probably not necessary and I would stay away from it unless the plants tell you that they need extra. Flourish will give you enough of that.
You can add extra Mg by picking up a carton of Epsom Salts at your local pharmacy. I dose 1/2 tsp. per 20gals.
You can dose carbon through CO2 injection or Flourish Excel. If you have a tank of 20 gals. or less and low/med. lighting, the Excel may be a good option for you. It gets expensive to dose in larger, higher light situations.

Len

 

[Starry]

Originally posted by MyShrimpDied
My question is: When you use micronutrients to fertilize your plants, is it important to have even levels of all three supplements (Magnesium, carbon, iron)? For example, if i added something to the tank that supplied it with Iron and i didnt supply it with magnesium or carbon, will it hurt the plants? or is it a more nutrients the better?

~ MyShrimpDied

Just to clarify a few things.
Carbon is a macronutrient, along with nitrogen, potassium and phorphorus. You won't find these in micronutrient or trace mixes like Flourish. Carbon is usually dosed as CO2 gas, or using Flourish Excel.

As for the levels, the way I understood it, you're asking whether you need to dose the same concentration of each. This is very incorrect if it's what you're thinking. For example, traces are dosed in very very small concentrations, and an excess can be very toxic. For macros, potassium can and should be dosed to about 20 ppm (parts per million, or mg/L), but phosporus should be at around 1 ppm only. So, the levels, or concentrations, are very different for each nutrient.

But, if you dose 1ppm phosporus and no nitrogen, carbon, potassium or traces, then you're in trouble. This is because plants can only grow if they have everything they need - it's like trying to bake a cake with only flour and no sugar or eggs. But algae are so opportunistic that they will really explode if some nutrients are in a large excess and the plants aren't growing well. So, technically it won't "hurt" your plants to dose only one nutrient, but the algae will take over.

The one thing you can dose by itself is carbon, or CO2 injection. This will always benefit your plants, but growth will pick up so much more if you add some traces and N,P,K.

Hope I clarified some things for you.