Blending Nitrates

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I would like to try increasing no3 with a mixture of sodium, calcium, potassium nitrates. I have the ingredients but I am not sure what the best ratio of each would be? Should they be equal? In weight or molecular weight? Or would be closer to seawater parameters be better? That is more sodium than calcium than potassium? Once mixed how do I know how much to add? Say my 100 gallon tank wants to increase from zero to 1 ppm?
Thanks for the advice in advance!
 
I don't see much benefit of anything relative to simple sodium nitrate since there is so little being added over time.

Even if you add 1 ppm nitrate every day for a year using sodium nitrate, and do no water changes, you are only increasing sodium by a bit over 1%.

If you wanted to dose a mixture, I'd dose them at NSW ratios, and I'd probably include magnesium if you could. I can go through the math later, but it will take a bit of calculating.
 
By weight, the combination would be:

79.1% sodium nitrate
15.5% magnesium nitrate
3.3% calcium nitrate
2.0% potassium nitrate
 
EDIT: The resulting mixture of nitrate salts contains 74.5% nitrate by weight, and the remaining cations are in the same proportion as NSW.
 
You guys explode my brain with your knowledge. I should try dosing this nitrate mix in lieu of the stump remover!
 
I already have a spreadsheet for calculating how to make up ASW mixes using combinations of various different salts to achieve a mix with given desired concentrations of the major ions. It was trivial to simply add the nitrate salts to the spreadsheet for the calculation done above. :D
 
EDIT: The resulting mixture of nitrate salts contains 74.5% nitrate by weight, and the remaining cations are in the same proportion as NSW.

So with a formula like this or similar, what would be the best way to blend with RO? Or how concentrated should it be? Or do we have choices here? And then once we dillute how do we calculate how much to add to increase no3?
 
Well, you could weigh them and add them individually to water, or weight them and mix them together thoroughly dry, and then add a weighed amount of the mixture to water. The concentration is up to you, limited only by the solubility of the salts, but they are all quite soluble. As I mentioned in the quote you replied to, the mixture is 74.5% nitrate by weight, so the PPM in solution will be how ever many milligrams of total salts you added per liter of water you added it to. You'll have to work out the amount to add depending upon the tank volume.

For example, let's say that you took the proportions I gave you above to create a mixture of a total of 100 grams, and dissolved that in enough water to make a total of 1 liter of solution. That would mean you used 79.1 grams of sodium nitrate, 15.5 grams of magnesium nitrate, 3.3 grams of calcium nitrate, and 2.0 grams of potassium nitrate. The resulting liter of solution would contain 74,500 PPM of nitrate. Now, let's say you wanted to add 1 PPM nitrate to a 100 gallon tank. 100 gallons = 378.5 liters, so you would need 378.5 / 74,500 liters = 5.1 mL of that solution to get your 1 PPM nitrate boost.

Please note that the numbers I cite above all assume anhydrous salts are being used. Magnesium nitrate and calcium nitrate are hygroscopic salts, and the anhydrous versions will tend to turn into the hydrated versions in air, which can make it difficult to weigh them accurately. Plus, the amount needed would have to be adjusted in proportion to their hydrated molecular weight vs. the anhydrous molecular weight, e.g., if you use magnesium nitrate hexahydrate (MW 256.41) instead of anhydrous magnesium nitrate (MW 148.32), then you would need 256.41 / 148.32 as much, so in the example above you would use 26.8 grams instead of 15.5 grams.

On a practical level, I'd just stick with Randy's original suggestion to just use sodium nitrate, since it is not hygroscopic. But I did the math for you about the balanced cation version he suggested, since you asked. If you were to just use sodium nitrate, then it is 73% nitrate, so if you were to dissolve 100 grams in enough water to make up 1 liter of solution, then it would take 378.5 / 73,000 liters = about 5.2 mL instead to add 1 PPM nitrate to a 100 gallon tank.
 

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