ideal trace mix

[Perrush]

Hi,

what would be your ideal trace mix ??
I guess were only looking for levels of Fe, B, Mn, Zn, Cu, Mo.

S and Cl will already be enough in the water as SO4- (K2SO4) and Cl- (KCl), so I don't think they are needed in a trace mix.

Ca and Mg are an other issue. They are often in the tap water, but differs strongly from egion to region, so no Ca or Mg in a trace needen.

What do you think of this (Fe as reference =1)

Fe=1.00 / B=1.00 / Mn=0.50 / Zn=0.15 / Cu=0.05 / Mo=0.005

Do you think specifiek plants / plant families do need a particular element much more ?? (red plants for instance)

[Sir Plants-a-lot]

I don't know all that much about the specific trace element requirements of plants, like how much is enough or how much is too much. But offhand I would say it might be an idea to reduce the copper slightly. At 1/20 of iron it's a bit high, IMHO. If it was my ideal mix i would have it at 1/50 or less just to avoid problems with the fish and shrimp.

That said, my current trace mix is Rexolin APN from AkzoNobel, which has copper at 1/25 of iron, and so far I haven't had any problems that I can definitely attribute to the copper but I'd still prefer to have less. Plantex has it at about 1/100 of iron, and a lot of people seem to be pretty happy with that.

Are you mixing your own recipe or is this a new commercially available product?

Regards,
Kevin

[Perrush]

@ Kevin :

I'll be mixing my own fertilizers (not only the traces) ofcours at lower prices

There is a lot more than bare numbers. Just see for example :
http://users.pandora.be/perrush/chelatoren.jpg

But the bare numbers are important too.

I'm not planning to make it commercialy available, but I can always ship a few grams

Tnx for the input.

[Sir Plants-a-lot]

That's useful information. My trace mix has DTPA as the iron chelator, EDTA for all the other metals. The local hydroponics outfit sells a few metal-EDTA salts and I had thought about mixing my own recipe, but it seemed a bit of a PITA. Maybe a good idea would be to get everything except copper and add them to the existing mix to dilute the copper. But that's a project for another day. Good luck with your mix.

Regards,
Kevin

[madans]

Fe:B = 1:1 is way too high in my opinion.

[Perrush]

you're complete right madans, it was just a little teaser to see if people actually read my post. And I had my reasons to put it " a little " higher as normal. But not much discussion on this thread, so I never revealed my reasons.

never mind :

this is what I had really in mind :
Fe=1
Mn=0.5 (is this to high ?? don't think so, but is higher than most traces)
B=0.25
Zn=0.15
Cu=0.05 (I would have set it at 0.1, but most are very reluctant about Cu)
Mo=0.01