Make everything yourself in an 125 gallon aquarium plant-based food

 

An aquarium quality fertilizer contains everything a plant needs to thrive and, contrary to popular belief, this includes nitrate and phosphate. As many larger manufacturers are still stuck in the past, it is difficult for the keen aquascaper to get hold of quality fertilizer cheaply because of shipping costs ... and the chances of your local fish stocking store a decent vegetable food is often slim - in fact they probably have still think that nitrate and phosphate causes algae to ... bless them.

It's really easy to make, you don't need any special equipment and there are links at the bottom for the calculator I have in case you want to make more or less that 1 liter as well as links to places where you can buy the ingredients.

Let's get started...

Weighing: -

96g - Potassium Nitrate - KNO3

4.4 g - Monopotassium Phosphate - KH2PO4

35g magnesium sulfate - MgSO4 - if using TNC Trace

34g magnesium sulfate - MgSO4 - if CSM + B with

0.4 g potassium sorbate

1g ascorbic acid

Method:-

Add in a suitable measuring jug your ascorbic acid, potassium sorbate and trace elements.

Up to 800ml with warm water - preferably R.O. (Reverse osmosis) or D.I. (de-ionized) fill, but if your tap water is soft you shouldn't worry too much. Even if it's hard the phosphate can react with calcium in your water, but as long as you shake it well to bring it up, precipitates are in solution when you dose it to beneficial bacteria in your aquarium that make these "insoluble" compounds available , Your plants - but again, if you're scared [or don't believe me either ... ;-)] then just use RO / DI.

Mix all of this until everything is completely dissolved and add the rest of your salts again, mix these until everything is completely dissolved and you can add the rest of your water to bring them up to the 1 liter mark

And you are done!

Bottle label - sell on eBay - out of the reach of children etc. etc. :-)

You can do this by metering the tank at a rate of 10ml to 100 liters of water - if you are using a tall light tank with CO2 or liquid carbon dioxide you could increase this to 30ml per 100 liters, but you should change the water 50% weekly at this rate through the organic and plant metabolites (not be thought of because of the nitrate and phosphate as usual ... that would just be a waste of money)

If you are interested in what levels of nutrient you will be dosing with this method you can follow this link to get the All-In-One Aquarium Plant Eating Calculator - where you will be able to adjust the dose rate etc and see for yourself. It are other cool calculators for you to play there.

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