Greg Watson CSM+B dosing help

[evercl92]

So I just got my order from Greg Watson this week. I'm looking for dosing assistance.

I have a very heavily planted 125gal tank. Currently, I have the 4x65wt Coralife fixture, supplemented by another 4x65wt fixture by Odyssea. I only use 2 bulbs from the Odyssea, since the other 2 are actinics. I use a cheapo CO2 system by jungle labs. I'm in the process of figuring out the best recipe for a 2L bottle with yeast/sugar (suggestions welcome). I dose flourish 2x /week, flourish excel (1.5x dosage) daily, flourish iron once a week. My phosphates are 5+ ppm, nitrates <5ppm, pH 7.0, kh 4, gh 12. I will be dosing KNO3 (also from Greg Watson) 3x a week.

My main questions are
1) how do I decide how much of the CSM+B to dose?
2) Do I have to mix it in solution before adding to my tank, or tank I add it directly to my tank?
3) Does this replace or do should I still use Flourish (not flourish excel, just regular flourish)?

As a side note, I finally got my DIY 2L bottle CO2 system working, after 3 tries...

 

[Tong]

I create a solution as dosing it dry might be very hard to measure for most tanks.

1 tsp Plantex CSM + B
167 mL H2O

1.5 mL of above solution will result in 0.1 ppm Fe in 10 gallons of water. People dose until they have sufficient iron, which is usually 0.1 - 0.3 ppm Fe. If you see Fe defficiencies, then dose more obviously. I would stop dosing flourish as I believe they are both micro solutions. And I completely forgot where I got this information so someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Congrats on the DIY CO2.

 

[Purrbox]

Here's a nice little calculator that one of our members put together. You'll want to dose enough to get .1 to .2 ppm of Fe. Flourish Comprehensive is also a Trace Fert so you'll probably want to use it up before switching to the CSM+B.

I'm sorry to say it but there is absolutely no way that the DIY CO2 as you described it is going to get you anywhere enough CO2 on that size tank. You'd probably need somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 Gallon bottles for CO2 generation. There's a reason why people using Pressurized CO2 on larger tanks like yours, it's just not economical or practical to do DIY CO2 on that big of a tank. The Flourish Excel will help some since it's a liquid carbon source, but at 1.5 the recommended dose you've got to be going through an enormous amount each week. Recommended dosage is 60ml after you water change and another 12ml each following day. This would be a total of 132ml per week at recommended dosage, or 198ml at 1.5 dosage you state you're using. Before long you'll have spent enough on Flourish Excel to pay for a Pressurized CO2 setup.