T.S.P will it work for phosphate? other dry firts i can find at store????

[biggdadyapisto]

I've been a mad dog lately on the look out for dry firts and i found tri-sodium phosphate and was wondering has anyone used it in success or is it a lost cause?

its cool never would have known that my water softener can use straight potassium chloride im going to use that for my K.

any other suggestions for firts that will work?

 

[DJDrZ]

I've been a mad dog lately on the look out for dry firts and i found tri-sodium phosphate and was wondering has anyone used it in success or is it a lost cause?

its cool never would have known that my water softener can use straight potassium chloride im going to use that for my K.

any other suggestions for firts that will work?

Chemically it should. I think when you buy dry fertz, it is potassium phosphate, so you get something useful as the counter ion.

 

[Left C]

You can use Stump Remover for dosing nitrates. Make sure that it is 100% potassium nitrate. Some products have other chemicals mixed with the potassium nitrate that are harmful. You can do a search for tons of info about this.

Here's one more. You can use Fleet Enemas for phosphate dosing. Again, there are tons of info around.

 

[plantbrain]

http://www.aquariumfertilizers.comhttp://www.aquariumfertilizer.com/

You can order everything you might ever need fert wise there for a few $.

 

[pbeemer]

potasium chloride is moderately acidic, and may move your pH down. don't know whether that per se would be good or bad for you. however, continuous use is also going to increase the amount of chloride ions in the water until you get to some equilibrium value based on your water change practices. most plants do not like chloride ion AT ALL. a different potassium salt would be a better choice as a source of potassium.

two issues with TSP:

1. there are a lot of things that say they are "TSP" but are not, or have things like detergents mixed into them. (TSP brand cleaners haven't had real TSP in them in 30 years.) this has happened because people jumped on the green bandwagon and reduced the phosphate content of their products, and then started flailing around trying to find something that actually worked acceptably. probably everything they put in that isn't really TSP is going to be bad for your plants and animals.

2.. TSP -- and all other phosphates added to the water -- is going to strip every last calcium ion out of the water. that's the principal benefit of using phosphates in detergents; they strip out the calcium ions out of hard water -- calcium phosphate is almost completely insoluble in water -- which liberates the actual cleaning agents that have been suppressed by the calcium. this will be serious to life-threatening to any plants or animals -- inverts in particular -- that really need calcium in the water, or for other reasons don't do well in super-soft water

 

[Mgamer20o0]

check the plant sticky there is a link to the diy ferts. though really the amout of time and effort put into getting them and finding out exactly how much to add i found its better to get the dry stuff.

$25 shipped will get you all that you are looking for. nothing to stress on how much to add.
http://www.bobstropicalplants.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=41&products_id=337

 

[KarlTh]

Potassium chloride acidic? I'd doubt it; it's a simple salt and so neither an acid nor a base. How would it act as a proton donor?

 

[plantbrain]

Also, how is calcium phosphate not formed in waters where both dissolved Ca++ and PO4 are present?
They clearly are present in my tanks and are at ample concentrations as well as much higher levels in Hoagland's modified hydroponic solution etc.
At certain pH and heat, it will form.........

Calcium phosphate is a salt in most forms, why do not K+ and Cl- ions form solids in water?

Same sort of thing here.

Here's my tank with plenty of Ca and plenty of PO4:

About 30ppm of Ca++ and about 6-9ppm of PO4 residuals.
Dosed 15ppm of PO4 and 45ppm of Ca++ most weeks total, good size water change removes a fair amount of build up.
These are not closed systems, plants will take up the ferts, the Cl-(which is an essential nutrients, thus the statement that plants do "not like any Chloride" is false) will be taken up and sequestered or trimmed out and exported.
This chemical is not that soluble compared to other potassium salts like mono basic potassium phosphate or KCL, so I'd use those for ease of use.

Some salts can have a slight effect on pH BTW, but this is minor in these cases above. A more common type, baking soda.... is a salt, but does have an effect on aquarium pH's.

While of interest, the bottom line is just to use KCL or something for K+ and KH2PO4 for PO4 etc.
If you use KNO3, it's not likely you will need any added K+ and you also will get a little from KH2PO4.
So if you using those, for 2-3$ per lb, and they are highly soluble, easy to get etc........
No real issues or debate.

 

[KarlTh]

Yeah, I was referring specifically to the simple salts like KCl, which you get of course if you mix equal quantities of HCl and KOH*. They neutralise each other. Key word being neutralise.

*Interesting to get bottles of each of these, nice concentrated solutions....

 

[pbeemer]

without trying to take the OP's question onto a tangent:

@Karlth: you don't need to be a proton donor (or acceptor) to affect pH -- for example, see "Lewis acid." a salt with no hydrogen at all can have a profound affect on pH when it dissolves; a classic example is AlCl3. generally speaking, for the same anion, H > Na > K as far as effect on pH.

in the other direction, a 1% solution of TSP (note the lack of hydrogens) raises the pH of water to ~12, admittedly not a huge effect if you're dosing to 10 ppm levels, where the pH would probably be ~8.5 - 9 if it weren't for any buffering in the system.

@plantbrain: the fact that you separately added Ca cations and phosphate anions to a solution doesn't mean that they're still there; most Ca phosphate species have "nil" solubility, which means that most (maybe down to 1 ppm) of the calcium phosphate will precipitate out -- not a problem for rooted plants, which can extract the phosphorus (and calcium) they need from the soil, but awkward for the floaters.

re: Cl-, if you look closely enough, probably anything is a micronutrient, the question is the dose. seawater is ~2% chloride ion, or ~20,000 ppm; most plants of interest to a planted aquarium can't take anything close to that. regulatory action levels for fresh water (drinking water or contamination levels in ground or surface water) are on the order of 500 ppm (acute) and 150 ppm (chronic); the 96 hour LC50 levels are on the (very) rough order of 1000 ppm for fish, with a wider but similar range for plants. since you probably don't want to replace half your plants and animals every 3 days, i suspect that you'd want to stay well below those levels.

if you're dosing K to ~15 ppm using KCl, your initial concentration of chloride will be ~12 ppm; however, since the plants' uptake removes K but not Cl, repeated dosing will let the chloride levels build up to an equilibrium level determined by your water change practices. for example, if you do 25% changes at the same frequency that you dose for K (e.g. you do both once a week) the chloride concentration will build up to ~50 ppm -- not huge, not toxic to most plants, but why add the stress when you can get the K in there some other way?