Dosing KN03 with a doser question

pecan2phat · Nov 8, 2018

A little confused on setting up a dosing regimen for KN03. If I utilize Jame's Planted Tank calculator, it's telling me to use 334 grams of KN03 in 3000 ml of RO/DI with 50 ml of the solution to achieve 5.01 ppm nitrate in a 180g tank.
50 ml per day via the doser sounds like a lot. Will the daily dosing of 5.01 ppm of nitrate just accumulate and implode or am I suppose to dose once and see what the nitrates drop daily?
Or should I start off with half the dose?
Totally confused, help please!

coral-boss · Nov 8, 2018

I feel its always better to start with a small dose of anything then test, add, adjust as necessary. dosing nitrates is not like dosing a major element and even with those, small adjustments are always best. I don't think you'll do harm by starting off at half dose or a 1/3 dose. my opinion anyway.

pecan2phat · Nov 8, 2018

Thanks coral-boss.
I keep the 1/2 dose on a daily regimen correct?

coral-boss · Nov 8, 2018

if I were dosing nitrates, that's probably what I would do. I don't see the harm in starting out with smaller doses and working up after testing for a few days. anything new that I begin to dose, like when I switched my 2 part dosing to 3 part balling I started out with way less than recommended just to find out the potency of the product. I always start with lower than recommended and see where I'm at after 24hrs, then add a little more and so on until I find what im looking for. should only take you a week or less to figure out what you need. sometimes doing less is more in the beginning with something new like that.

pecan2phat · Nov 8, 2018

Thanks again.
I setup the doser for 20 ml over 10 hours vs 50 ml.
So I'll start testing after 24 hours to see if the 2 ppm of N03 stays current, increases or decreases.