Give your plant growth an extra boost! Seachem Flourish Iron is a water conditioner that stimulates plant growth in your aquarium. Recommended for use with Flourish, Flourish Tabs, and Flourite. Free of phosphates and nitrates. Iron is an important nutrient in the planted aquarium. Flourish Iron should be used in planted aquariums where aquatic plants demonstrate signs of iron deficiency (such as short and slender stems or yellowing between veins).

Recommended Dosage: Use 1 capful (5 ml) for each 200 L (50 gallons*) or as required to maintain about 0.10 mg/L iron. For smaller doses, please note that each cap thread is approximately 1 ml. Use Seachem's MultiTest: Iron^TM test kit (#434288) to monitor iron concentrations. Use as needed to combat signs of iron deficiency (usually seen in new growth), which include: chlorosis (yellowing) of tissue between veins and short and slender stems.

*1.0% Soluble Iron (Fe)
Derived from: Ferrous Gluconate

General Information
Iron is immobile in plants. This means that plants cannot divert iron from older leaves to new ones. Therefore, deficiency symptoms appear first on new or young leaves. Because plants use iron to produce chlorophyll, a lack of iron results in chlorosis, or yellowing, of the younger leaves. Stems may also appear short and slender. If the deficiency is severe and prolonged, each new leaf emerges lighter in color than the preceding leaf.

When choosing an iron supplement, it is important to know the distinction between the two forms of iron. The iron will be in one of two oxidation states: ferrous having a +2 charge, or ferric having a +3 charge. Ferrous iron, the preferred iron form and is soluble in water at any pH. Ferric iron, however, is only soluble below a pH of around 5.5; but if the pH is higher than 5.5, which more than likely it will be in a planted aquarium, the ferric iron will become insoluble and precipitate, settling in the root zone. Once this occurs, foliar absorption becomes impossible.

To overcome this precipitation, competing products employ a chelate of ferric iron: iron-EDTA. While this does keep it soluble, it has a couple of drawbacks with respect to foliar uptake of iron. (1) Iron-EDTA bonding is very strong, thus very little of the iron will be available to the plants over a given time frame and (2) Physiological energy must be expended by the plant in order to extract the ferric iron from EDTA-iron and then convert (reduce) it to the ferrous form. Seachem's approach is different in that they use a complex (not chelate) of ferrous iron in Flourish Iron.

Flourish Iron is a highly concentrated (10,000 mg/L) ferrous iron gluconate supplement. Plants are able to derive much more easily a bene?t from Flourish Iron because ferrous iron gluconate is already in the ferrous form so they do not expend energy reducing it. Despite what other manufacturers may intimate, gluconate is not harmful to plants or fish. In fact, ferrous gluconate is better suited to foliar feeding than is iron-EDTA owing to the relatively weaker iron-gluconate bonding vs. iron-EDTA bonding. In addition, ferrous gluconate has the added bonus of being a source of carbon.

About Seachem
Seachem's philosophy is that the knowledgeable hobbyist makes the best customer. This is reflected in solid and reliable customer education and support as well as products proven in science and performance. While Seachem has grown rapidly into a national and international firm, it retains the culture of a small company and is readily available to its customers.

For over three decades, Seachem has been a company rooted in sound science. Their experience in the hobby and an educated staff of chemists and biologists are part of the package when you purchase Seachem products. Seachem remains as one of the few surviving independent and privately owned pet care companies. Seachem is owned and operated by hobbyists. All of their employees are hobbyists who maintain aquariums at home and at the office. Seachem itself was started because one such hobbyist found the available solutions to aquarists' problems wanting. This resulted in Seachem's very first product: Cupraplex™ (today known as Cupramine™). Over thirty years later Seachem is still approaching old problems in a new way.