DIY For Manganese

[t5Nitro]

Just wanted to tag onto this thread with some guidance on concentration as I have been dosing my own DIY Manganese for over a decade. I think you can use whatever form of Mn you like, my concentration I dose is 0.8µg per day. I've had no issues and have even dosed 2X the amount for 1.6µg per day with ICP checks and never had problems. Mn gets used pretty quickly so even though you dose you might still never see it in an ICP test.

what is the total system volume you're dosing 0.8 ug into?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

@Randy Holmes-Farley how often have you noticed the manganese gluconate stock solution needing to be discarded? I bought the smallest bag but the number of days 1 liter can dose routinely is many years. Wondering if you’re clued in to color change or anything else that you might replace the stock?

I think it’s likely it will be stable for as long as you want it. If you start to see a brown precipitate, then I’d discard it, but I would not worry about that in advance.

 

[JBNY]

Just wanted to tag onto this thread with some guidance on concentration as I have been dosing my own DIY Manganese for over a decade. I think you can use whatever form of Mn you like, my concentration I dose is 0.8µg per day. I've had no issues and have even dosed 2X the amount for 1.6µg per day with ICP checks and never had problems. Mn gets used pretty quickly so even though you dose you might still never see it in an ICP test.

what is the total system volume you're dosing 0.8 ug into?

1250 Liters

 

[Billgasser]

@Randy Holmes-Farley I’m going to start making my own DIY Manganese using your recipe.
What scale would you recommend from Amazon? I already use your ammonia DIY , thank you.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

There are many good ones, but I bought this one:

https://a.co/d/04C0QdU9

 

[t5Nitro]

@Randy Holmes-Farley have you seen bacterial blooms associated with dosing the manganese gluconate? I mixed up your recipe 1g to 1L of water. I dosed a total of 1, 0.5ml yesterday and 0.5ml this morning. This small volume was dosed into a 570L system. I just happened to go look at the tank this afternoon, and it’s entirely clouded white with inability to see past 2ft. This is with mechanical filtration in the sump and a UV sterilizer running continuously.

Nothing else in my tank has changed. I’m wondering if there is any contributing factor from the trace dose, because I can’t find another cause yet.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

@Randy Holmes-Farley have you seen bacterial blooms associated with dosing the manganese gluconate? I mixed up your recipe 1g to 1L of water. I dosed a total of 2mL, one yesterday and one this morning. This small volume was dosed into a 570L system. I just happened to go look at the tank this afternoon, and it’s entirely clouded white with inability to see past 2ft. This is with mechanical filtration in the sump and a UV sterilizer running continuously.

Nothing else in my tank has changed. I’m wondering if there is any contributing factor from the trace dose, because I can’t find another cause yet.

No, but it’s not an impossibility that there may have been suitable organics and bacteria present for a bacterial bloom, but just not enough manganese for them to grow rapidly.

 

[t5Nitro]

No, but it’s not an impossibility that there may have been suitable organics and bacteria present for a bacterial bloom, but just not enough manganese for them to grow rapidly.

Updated post to be 1mL total, half on each day. I was originally intending 1mL each day but started slow. Seems like almost trivial of a dose to have mattered. I’ll keep looking for other causes if I can identify one.

This is generally a no water change system with manganese undetected by oceamo testing, if that’s useful info at all.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Updated post to be 1mL total, half on each day. I was originally intending 1mL each day but started slow. Seems like almost trivial of a dose to have mattered. I’ll keep looking for other causes if I can identify one.

This is generally a no water change system with manganese undetected by oceamo testing, if that’s useful info at all.

The thing about some of these trace elements is that organisms do not need much to go from being limited by them to not being so limited.

There was a famous experiment in the ocean (called iron-ex) where iron was added, with a target concentration of adding about 0.2 ug/L, and it made phytoplankton bloom, demonstrating that iron was limiting the growth at that location. It took very little to lift that limitation.

 

[Sm1nts2escape]

My question is how much boosting per day are you allowed to raise Maganese? Do you just dump the correction dose all in at once or spread it out over a month? My ICP came back with Maganese at .11. I want to target .6 so I am .49ug deficient per L. 1.24ug/l x 40% = .496. I have a 415l system so I take 415ml x 40% = 166ml needed to boost my system to target? Also Just wanted to say thanks for this and all the other post Randy. They are super helpful.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

There is no reason that I know of to not boost to your target all at once. That said, whatever you do, you won’t know how fast it declines without another test.

An alternative approach is to just add some each day and hope it is enough.