Dosing KNO3 causes cloudy water

[teamgs]

Greetings,
For some reason, when I dose KNO3 into my tank, within a day, the water turns mildly cloudy. It then takes at least a week to clear, with water changes.

I was following the directions on the fert bag, to end up with 11 ppm NO3, then tried cutting it in half, with the same result.

I am using Rex Grigg's bulk ferts, and the bag states to use 1/4 teaspoon (1.4 g) to raise 20 Gal of water by 11.29 ppm. Since I have a 90 gal tank, I was using 1 teaspoon of KN03.

I can't recall the actual values, as I tested them a while ago, but I seem to remember that the PPM N03 was within reason 30 min after adding the fert.

Generally, unless I am dosing regularly, my tanks drops to almost 0 ppm N03, so I don't think I am having a buildup.

Is this a normal occurance? Am I doing something stupid to cause this? Should I be premixing the fert with water?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Regards,

Gary

 

[czcz]

Dry dosing KNO3 has never made my water cloudy, be it as Greenlight Stump Remover (relatively large balls presumably with many impurities), the granular KNO3 Greg Watson used to sell, the 4 9's stuff some guys from SCAPE scored a few years ago, or the dusty-fine stuff Rex is selling now. Really the only things I've dosed that makes water cloudy is dry dosing chelated Fe or Greg's old CSM+B+Extra Fe mix or Agro CAN (with ammonium). (I don't think I have ever dosed straight CSM+B.)

How much do you trust the container the KNO3 is in, and your dosing teaspoon/whatever? If you don't dose for two days straight, the water does not get cloudy?

 

[czcz]

ideas:

What happens if you follow your exact dosing procedure to put that same dose in a cup of water?

What happens to a cup of water you pull out after dosing the tank?

 

[teamgs]

Thanks for the replies. I will test the dosing into the a cup of water.

I have no reference for the dry ferts, as I never used them before. I ordered them directly from rexgriggs.com. The measurer may not be the most accurate, but it isn't too bad.

Once the water turns cloudy, if I don't do water changes, it will stay cloudy. (There may be a period which the cloudiness will dissipate, but I don't wait that long before doing a water change.)

Regards,

Gary

 

[czcz]

How's it looking?

For clarity, I only mean the many kinds of ferts we get, assuming they are not reagent grade (nor should they be -- its just plants and fish ), have varying levels of impurity, but none of the many different types of KNO3 seem to cause cloudiness. So, I suspect contamination or some other issue.

I am sorry for these weak cell phone pics, but this may be helpful to someone later. All these doses would be if one was reconstituting RO with a rich dosing style (It would be ~15ppm NO3, ~2ppm PO4, ~20ppm K, ~0.5ppm F3, ~40ppm Ca when dumped into my tank's volume). Anyway, HTH.

Notice K2SO4 and KCl do not dilute quickly but do not appear to cloud much (but does cloud a little -- never noticed this before). The KCl is "Sodium Free Water Softener" and that nuggest started off about twice as big.

The CSM+B+Fe is really an old mix Greg Watson came up with. It's CSM+B (which is normally 7% Fe) with extra DPTA chelated Fe to raise the total Fe to 10%. This stuff is at least four years old and has been in a ziplock bag in a drawer for most of it -- I have no idea how this will affect Fe (its probably all oxidized now, though), but its always clouded the water like that.

The Fe is DPTA 10%. You can see a little green in that pic as it dilutes.

"Tropica" is Tropica Master Grow, again an old bottle of mine that is at least three years old and lived in that same drawer. Its purply pink in the bottle but turns greenish when diluted.

The Calcium Ammonia Nitrate is agricultural grade. Notice the scary bubbles in the second pic The CaCl2 is "Calcium Hardness Increaser" for pools.

 

[teamgs]

Thanks for the photos and tips. I haven't had the time to work on it yet.

I am currently repairing the results of a brain fart on my part. I accidentally reformatted the data drive on my PC, while attempting to reinstall my operating system on my OS drive.

With my data recovery software, and backup from last month (Yeah, you would think an IT guy like me would have a more current one, but I must have not enabled my daily backup routine after my last OS repair), I think the only thing I will lose is around 1 month's worth of email.

In addition, my wife's 8 month old notebook crashed the same day, and I am trying to repair it as well! Unfortunately, ACER didn't see fit to include a repair disk with the PC, and the recovery partition on the unit is damaged. Sigh...when it rains it pours!

Gary

 

[czcz]

np. Please let us know how it goes in your tank -- I hope it works out.

"DPTA" above should be "DTPA," by the way. Its been a while