Schultz all purpose fertilizer for aquarium

Phyroath

Senior knowledge seeker
Jan 30, 2008
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Phnom Penh
Hello,
I did my post on my CO2 reactor in the Freshwater and DIY. As I keep saying it is hard for me to find aquarium stuffs in Cambodia. With this I bought Schultz plant food and dose my tank a few days now (with separate dosing of KNO3). Not sure at all what would be the problems I would encounter as there is no choice. The problem is that the plant food contain ammoniac..something which I heard toxic to fish. Should I stop doing this or continue dosing my tank in smaller amount? (currently about 1/4 teaspoon).
 
Dose whatever you need to raise nitrates to 20-25 PPM.

I'm not sure what your talking about with ammoniac, but there are non-toxic versions of ammonia such as NH4 that won't harm fish yet is available to your bacteria and plants.

I'll google this and post a reply on what I find.

from wik

Sal ammoniac is a rare mineral composed of ammonium chloride, NH4Cl. It forms colorless to white to yellow brown crystals in the isometric-hexoctahedral class. It has very poor cleavage and a brittle to conchoidal fracture. It is quite soft, with a Mohs hardness of 1.5 to 2, and has a low specific gravity of 1.5. It is water-soluble.
It typically forms as encrustations formed by sublimation around volcanic vents. It is found around volcanic fumaroles, guano deposits and burning coal seams. Associated minerals include sodium alum, native sulfur and other fumarole minerals. Notable occurrences include Tadzhikistan; Mt. Vesuvius, Italy; and Parícutin, Michoacan, Mexico.
Sal ammoniac is also the archaic name for the chemical compound ammonium chloride; from Greek, άλς άμμωνιακός hals ammoniakos, salt of Ammon, because of its early manufacture in Egypt.
It is commonly used as a flux in the soldering of stained-glass windows. In both jewelery-making and the refining of precious metals, potassium carbonate (cream of tartar) is added to gold and silver in a borax-coated crucible to purify iron or steel filings that may have contaminated the scrap. It is then air-cooled and remelted with a one-to-one mixture of powdered charcoal and sal ammoniac to yield a sturdy ingot of the respective metal or alloy in the case of sterling silver (0.75% copper) or karated gold. Anything other than 24-karat gold has silver and copper added. Usually the addition of silica, zinc, and deoxidants in very small amounts relative to the pennyweight (dwt.) of gold are processed into gold from as low as 8-karat to as high as 23.5-karat gold. This is added to prevent porosity or cracking while milling the ingot further into wire, sheet, or tubing. Without those additives an otherwise poor-quality ingot will result in open crucible melting with a hand torch or blowpipe and flame, as was done before electric melting furnaces were invented for use in the precious metals industry. These practices are still used by metalsmiths and jewelers today.
Sal ammoniac has also been used in the past in bakery products to give cookies a very crisp texture, although that application is rapidly dying due to the general disuse of it as an ingredient. However, in some areas of Europe, particularly Scandinavia, it is still widely used in the production of salty licorice candy known as Salmiak. The term sal ammoniac has largely fallen out of general use in the 20th century.



Since its NH4 (non-toxic ammonia) bonded to table salt, should be safe. My assumption is that the ferts just uses it in trace amounts.
 
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I had asked about this a while ago. I was told that, like you have identified, most soil plant fertilizers use ammonia or ammonium as a source for N, rather than nitrate. If you're dosing KNO3 as a nitrate source, why use a second source? I was also told that using ammonium as a source for N will cause green water outbreaks.

And for the record, NH4 is ammonium, and NH4Cl is ammonium chloride (ammonium bonded to Chloride, not table salt, which would be something like NH4NaCl, which doesn't make any sense.)
 
Oh yeah and also, N is a macronutrient...used a lot more than trace elements.
 
I am sorry - I checked and it is ammoniacal nitrogen. I heard that it would cause algae bloom. Some sites about aquarium fert mention that all purpose plant food can be used but ask to avoid the ammoniacal nitrogen.
 
I dose KNO3 because there is no such element in the plant food - I am really confusing.
 
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