[Philosophos]

Of course you could just buy 1lb of CSM+B for $20, some HCl for another few dollars ($15 for 2 gal of 14.5% at home depot) and maybe another $10 in DI H2O and have enough to mix up 7-8 gals of stable micros. You'd be dosing .5ppm of iron a week at that rate; not as high as some go, but very far from limiting.

Kinda beats paying $50-$60/gal, especially considering your HCl will do for many more batches to come and you'll be getting a scale with which you can mix macro stock solutions or just dry dose by weight rather than hoping your teaspoon or their cap is accurate.

 

[Philosophos]

You don't really need to know much

If you can bake cookies and use household cleaners or solvents responsibly, I'm pretty sure you can pull this recipe off. The time to do this might be a couple hours the first time around, including cleaning the work space and cleaning up after. With some practice, you should be able to get it done in less than an hour.

"Cooking" Ingredients:
15.3g CSM+B
10-15ml HCl (14.5% at home depot sold as muriatic acid for pools, the same amount of 10% will work too; it's a padded number)
1-2L DI H2O (get 1 gal from your local supermarket, sometimes it's in the pharmacy)

Tools:
1 measuring cup or other container that can accurately measure 1L
1 tbsp measure (1 tbsp is about 15ml, you can measure your HCl with this)
1 disposable pipette (For the HCl, those full bottles are hard to pour. nail salons should have them if you don't have a hydroponics or chem store around.)
1 scale accurate to at least .1 of a gram ($25 for one more accurate than that can be ordered online.)
1 stir spoon for mixing
1 spoon for scooping the CSM+B
1 small container to put on the scale for measuring CSM+B
1L bottle
1 funnel (Depending on your mixing container.)
100+ rags for wiping spills and residues. Seriously though, keep a few around; a good cleaning helps.

Safety:
-Glasses
-Apron
-Gloves
-Long sleeved shirt
-Pants optional (just kidding)

Directions:

1. Start by giving all your tools and work surface a wipe down (no... not the rags too, but they should be clean). Use some DI H2O to do this.

2. Pour about 2/3 of a liter of DI H2O into your mixing container.

3. Add 10-15ml of HCl to the mixing container, stir, wait 5 minutes.

4. Weigh out 15.3g of CSM+B. Be sure to use the tare button or subtract the weight of your weighing container.

5. Add the CSM+B to the DI H2O gradually while stirring. It may clump up on you if you add it too quickly, just break it with the tip of the spoon and it will go into solution.

6. Keep stirring until everything is dissolved. There will likely be a few grains of impurity at the bottom. Leave it sit for a few minutes after to be sure that the mixing is done.

7. Top off the solution to 1L

8. Pour the finished product into your bottle, and mark the bottle clearly.

Dosing:
1ml for ever 6L of column dosed 3x a week will give you .5ppm of Fe through CSM+B, and all the other micros that go along with it. This recipe will not spoil if left out of the fridge, the HCl prevents that. I believe one batch lasts about 12 weeks on a 50 gal tank.

 

[Philosophos]

Good point there nfrank.

If you're going to mix a batch of this stuff up, you can get a 1 quart bottle of hydrogen peroxide from target for $1. It's nice and solid so the Fe EDTA won't get screwed up by sunlight.

I wish I could recall the company that made my fert mixing containers; I can't find a brand anywhere. They do commercial kitchen wares, and all their measuring tools are accurate but inexpensive. I'll ask next time I'm by the restaurant supply store.

For the average hobbyist, tsp/tbsp are definitely passable; feel free to convert with fertilator. This recipe is for the hobbyist new to DIY dosing. You could dose half as much or twice as much as that recipe lists, and the average person wouldn't notice a difference.

At the same time, I heavily encourage everyone to get a scale because I believe it's a cheap tool that does a hobbyist a lot of good. DIY 4KH solutions and test kit calibration solutions are things that should be far more common in the hobby, DIY dechlorinator too. If you have a scale, you can save far more money by using it than what it cost to buy the scale in the first place. Yes, I unabashedly publish scale industry propaganda in my posts

 

[Philosophos]

I did some looking and comparing. For the average hobbyist, ordering in a 2000ml glass beaker is probably the best bet. The stuff I'm using is too big to mix single or even double batches; I thought they had smaller.

For my individual test batches, I actually use a pyrex measuring cup that I've determined to be accurate by comparing with a proper graduated cylinder. I'll probably be ordering a beaker myself in the near future; 2L is perfect for mixing 1L and being able to stir at a decent rate.

Target hydrogen peroxide bottles are really the best deal for bottles. By the time you're through getting plastic bottles shipped to you, the break-even point might be something like 1000 plastic bottles.

 

[Philosophos]

Doing the bottle thing should work for macros, but be sure it's a clear bottle rinsed out with DI so you can see everything dissolve completely. I'd personally swirl without a cap because some of those reactions will generate heat, meaning pressure. Others are endothermic; might suck the bottle in a little.

CSM+B is not one I'd recommend for the bottle; it can turn into chunks of precipitate under certain conditions that take a while and some proding to disassociate again.

In terms of tap water, I couldn't recommend it. Water our of a tap is not completely stable or reliable beyond being within EPA limits because of testing. I've seen tap go through NO3 and PO4 spikes with the farming season, 4KH shifts on areas that run off multiple wells (Boise, ID is this way believe it or not), etc. For the 80 cents a gallon of DI costs, I'd rather have reliable ferts. Even anything labeled as using steam distillation isn't too bad of a bet.