Sprint 330 Iron Chelate

• pH:
• Temp:
• KH:
• GH:
• NH4:
• NO2:
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• Iron:
• Dosing: 0 mL Flourish, 60 mL Flourish Iron (1.2 ppm)

Notes:
I got the 5 lb. bucket of iron chelate called Sprint 330. It's basically the same thing as its predecessor Sequestrene 330, both of which have 10% iron. Including shipping, it cost $50. Say a 2L jug of Flourish Iron costs about $20, and Flourish Iron contains 10,000 mg/L (20,000 mg total), the Sprint 330 bucket contains 227,000 mg iron. If both are equally effective (which can't be assumed since they use different mechanisms of iron gluconate versus iron DPTA), the Sprint bucket is several times cheaper. I just ran out of my bottle of Flourish Iron, so I mixed up a 250 mL solution of the iron chelate (10 tsp Sprint + 250 mL water, 1 mL = 0.1 ppm in 60 gallons). We'll see how effective the iron chelate is.

I received some new plants from Arizona Aquatic Gardens, an online aquarium plant retailer. I soaked the plants in an alum solution (4 Tbsp aluminum ammonium sulfate in 1 gallon water) for a couple hours to kill any snails that might be lurking in the plants. Meanwhile, I decided to prune the Rotala plants. It was like a jungle in there. I cut the best tops off, pulled out the bottom half of the stems, and replanted the tops. I must have ended up throwing out at least half the plant mass.

Before pruning

The new plants I got are Ludwigia repens, Ludwigia glandulosa, Glossostigma elatinoides, and Micranthemum micranthemoides (baby tears). I also got those 12" tweezers, which came in really handy, especially with the glosso. Typically, you try to plant the glosso stems individually, but when I saw how much glosso I got, I decided to just plant them in bunches.

After pruning and planting

I had also ordered 15 dwarf emerald green eye rasboras, but the azgardens site messed up my order (again), charging me for 7 fish, giving me only 5 (with 3 DOA), and one of the two living fish not even the right species of fish! The poor dwarf rasbora was very small, only half an inch long, and without a school of others for protection, even the harlequin rasboras were chasing it as if it was lunch on the go. On my last order, they didn't ship me $30 of anubias nana, though they charged me for it. When I asked about the missing plants, they said it was shipping in a separate box, which of course never arrived, probably because it was never shipped! They refunded that part when I called them again. I've read online how this company gets mixed reviews, and so I think this is a consistent pattern of behavoir. I think it's time to find another supplier, which bums me out because their plants are really nice and the prices very reasonable.