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Help needed for new dosing routine

fablau

Member
Joined
1 Jan 2015
Messages
156
Location
Laguna Niguel, California (USA)
Hello everyone, I need advice for a new dosing routine that could better fit my water change schedule which is currently based on a 50% water change every 2 weeks. Unfortunately I can’t currently afford to change water more often than that.

I have easily found out the amount of macros I need to dose every week without accumulating them too much (just because I can easily test KNo3 as well as Po4), but I am having issues to calculate correctly the amount of micros, that I’d like to be able to dose as a solution daily for the sake of simplicity, and I want to be sure to avoid possible deficiencies as well as possible accumulation of traces which could potentially take me into the toxicity realm as I have read around (with the every-two-weeks water change schedule, accumulation of nutrients is something that could more easily happen than with the traditional weekly water change routine).


Here is my current tank’s data:

75gl tank with wet/dry filter
Pressurized Co2 30-40ppm during photoperiod
Photoperiod of 7 hours a day.
Light intensity: 40-50 PAR at substrate
KNo3 weekly dosing: 3 x 1/4 tsp (about 4.24 grams)
Po4 weekly dosing: 1 x 1/8 tsp (about 0.50 grams)
Tank is heavily planted, see a picture of my tank at the link below to understand my plant density:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/euzxai1csv...06.22.jpg?dl=0


The schedule I’d like to have is the following, based on a 2-weeks schedule with water change on Saturday:

1st week Saturday: 50% WC + macros dosing
1st week Sunday: traces dosing
1st week Monday: traces dosing
1st week Tuesday: traces dosing
1st week Wednesday: traces dosing
1st week Thursday: traces dosing
1st week Friday: traces dosing

2nd week Saturday: macros dosing
2nd week Sunday: traces dosing
2nd week Monday: traces dosing
2nd week Tuesday: traces dosing
2nd week Wednesday: traces dosing
2nd week Thursday: traces dosing
2nd week Friday: traces dosing


I’d like to dose micros by using 1 liter solution that I can dose daily from Sunday to Friday, and I found that a possible dosing regime would be making a solution of 1 liter (1000 ml) with about 40 grams of Plantex CSM + B which would give me a daily dosing of 10 ml. By using Wet’s calculator (http://rota.la), looks like that that will give me about 0.1 ppm of Fe a day… will that be enough? Or will that be potential of accumulation issues in the future? I have used the very cool “Accumulation of fertilizers vs time and plant uptake” from Wet’s calculator, trying to understand what are my risks, but it is very difficult to have useful data without knowing my tank’s plant intake… how would you know that? From the picture of my tank and my tank’s data above, how much intake would you think my plants would have every week? Do you think such a kind of trace regime would be sufficient, not enough, or too much?

I am open to your advice, thoughts and suggestions… thanks to all in advance!

Best,
Fab.
 
:stop:

You're making this more complicated than it has to be. Don't get caught up in the numbers, your test kits aren't as accurate as you think. Just dose regular EI and change your water every 2 weeks.

Adding all the macros on 1 day is a bad idea, and why are you dosing traces 6 times a week?

Watch your plants for signs of deformities and deficiencies and go from there.
 
Kiss. Keep it simple stupid....

Dose as per EI, you will never get near problem amounts of phosphate or nitrate. Do not rely on test kits they will be wrong....

Also halve your light possibly by blocking half or on for half the time or just ignore and do a super duper clean every fortnight. KISS.
 
:stop:

You're making this more complicated than it has to be. Don't get caught up in the numbers, your test kits aren't as accurate as you think. Just dose regular EI and change your water every 2 weeks.

Adding all the macros on 1 day is a bad idea, and why are you dosing traces 6 times a week?

Watch your plants for signs of deformities and deficiencies and go from there.

If I dose regular EI with water change every 2 weeks, nutrients accumulate badly after a few months, I have tried that and reached over 100ppm NO3 or over 15ppm P after 3-4 months! Even if my plants grow well, why should I waste and pollute water so much? Keep it simple is also from the nature stand point... Give plants what they really need. Just my thought.

To dose macros just once a week and micros every day would be really to make it simpler for me. It is a practice adopted by many aquarist with success, and for me would be less confusing than alternating days and will help my plants that may suffer micro deficiencies easily due to my water very high Ph.
 
Kiss. Keep it simple stupid....

Dose as per EI, you will never get near problem amounts of phosphate or nitrate. Do not rely on test kits they will be wrong....

Also halve your light possibly by blocking half or on for half the time or just ignore and do a super duper clean every fortnight. KISS.

As I wrote in my previous post. Reached very high levels of No3 and P after a few months, and used reference solutions, not colored strips.

Why should I takle my light??
 
You could try the PPS-PRO method or you could simple do the trial and error method suggested by Tom here and here. What could go wrong? Algae.

Yes, that's actually what I have done so far (basically I want to keep EI, but with half water changes), but I find myself at the point where I don't know what way take because some of my plants are not giving me clear feedback from which I can take action with confidence... Let me explain, I really don't want to make all this too complicated, but what I am trying to find out is if by dosing 10ml of the above solution daily every week, with a water change every 2 weeks, I have any risks to reach toxicity levels. I am sure you are asking yourself: why is this guy worried about all this if his plants are growing well? Well, it's because some of them are not growing well right now. Some plants like Alternanthera Reinikii and Rotala Rotoundifolia are a little stunted at the tips, which makes me think they have some sort of micros deficiency... Or are those signs of a possible toxicity? I am quite confused, and your help to understand on what side I am actually in (deficiency or toxicity?) is very welcome! I hope I gave you enough data to help me in this quest. I will try to post some pictures later today which will help a great deal.
 
Yes, I am with you EnderUK, I will do that and let you know. In the meantime, here are some pictures of my tank:

9dbc16174bad821611ddf72f473090e3.jpg


Here is my Rotala's stunted tips, I hope you can see them:

db54eda72e2e8533f6023047d90eb48a.jpg


1b93fad7e6250cf3ea668309ca986888.jpg



And here is my Althernanthera:

fb3f4e2da0f2fe2fbdb1a34cc734390c.jpg


24aad04e4c2b33e1086a7bc17de17b5b.jpg


As I said, all other plants are growing well despite I have a little of BBA on slow growers old leaves... I'll wait for your additional thoughts! Thanks!
 
Looking forward to seeing how you sort this out fablau. My rotund and AR seem to do the same thing. Can't figure it out either.
 
Have you tried to increase traces? Another guy had this same issue and by increasing traces worked for him (as it worked for me before!) Starting tomorrow I will try to double traces and see what's gonna happen. I will keep you posted guys. Thanks!
 
The EI weekly/frequent water change serves numerous purposes...

1. Most important, in fact more important that the others is it removes the organic plant waste, produced by the plants growing in such enhanced conditions ie high light and high fertiliser and high CO2. If you don't remove this weekly (or regularly) you will very quickly see algae moving in as this waste is algae food....first on glass & hardscape then on plants as they start to suffer. Fish will not be happy as well if it gets too high.

2. Remove excess ferts. Well not so important as above, I had 300ppm NO3 & 80ppm PO4 for a while after my pump emptied a litre bottle or EI solution into my tank. Only realised after a couple of days when I went to see how much was in the bottle and it was empty and pump running 24/7...my fault, time clock issue. Were fish bothered...no fish were fine, no change at all in behaviour. No algae outbreak either, despite "everyone knows high phosphate and/or nitrate causes algae", algae isn't in fact caused by this, as this proves.

3. Resets the ferts levels to a known amount (without having to use a test kit). Removing 50% of water resets the ferts level to a known maximum, thus when more are adding more ferts you will know approximately what ferts levels you have, again no test kit involved. Notice no need to trust/use/rely on a test kit, as hobby ones won't give reliable sensible readings.

Also you mustn't dose macro and micro together as they will react and the Fe from micro will precipitate out as insoluble (and unavailable to plants) iron phosphate.

Also you must really dose daily, as if you "dump" it all in at beginning of the week the plants will "scoff it all" and suffer lack of ferts by the end of the week. Also the jump to high nitrates and high phosphates when added may stress the fish, who will not be happy.

Also generally "physical" damage to the plants (other than caused by over active fish) is a sign of CO2 deficiency, rather than lack of ferts.

P.S. Nice tank...
 
Remove excess ferts. Well not so important as above, I had 300ppm NO3 & 80ppm PO4 for a while after my pump emptied a litre bottle or EI solution into my tank. Only realised after a couple of days when I went to see how much was in the bottle and it was empty and pump running 24/7...my fault, time clock issue. Were fish bothered...no fish were fine, no change at all in behaviour. No algae outbreak either, despite "everyone knows high phosphate and/or nitrate causes algae", algae isn't in fact caused by this, as this proves.

Wow, that's really a huge dump of ferts! Nice to know nothing bad happened!


Also you must really dose daily, as if you "dump" it all in at beginning of the week the plants will "scoff it all" and suffer lack of ferts by the end of the week. Also the jump to high nitrates and high phosphates when added may stress the fish, who will not be happy.

This may be a valid point. I have decided to dose macros just once a week because I have seen they get sustained through the whole week enough to not going under the needed minimum, whereas I decided to dose micros daily because those could be easily oxidized, precipitate or being neutralized after a while... Am I wrong in this assumption?
 
Am I wrong in this assumption?
Yes. As I said the micros will react with phosphate from your "weekly ferts dump" :angelic: and precipitate out as insoluble iron phosphate and become unavailable to plants. This is why you can't weekly dump macros as it will negate any micro added later, as post 37 suggests this may be causing your issues, lack of iron. You need to dose alternate daily macro & micro, keeping them apart for as long as possible.

However you an make an all in one and dose daily. The trick here is it acidic and keeps the iron chelated (low pH) and thus unavailable to react with the phosphate.
http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/allinone.htm

Wow, that's really a huge dump of ferts! Nice to know nothing bad happened!
Hmmm just writing a post about timer failure due to Mr Johnny Fumblefingers and Mr RTFM and liquid carbon over dose....
 
Yes. As I said the micros will react with phosphate from your "weekly ferts dump" :angelic: and precipitate out as insoluble iron phosphate and become unavailable to plants. This is why you can't weekly dump macros as it will negate any micro added later, as post 37 suggests this may be causing your issues, lack of iron. You need to dose alternate daily macro & micro, keeping them apart for as long as possible..

Well, I am not sure to agree with what you are saying... The amount of macros I dose every week corresponds to what I used to dose every 3 days before, and with this schedule macros and micros are actually much more apart than dosing macros more often... Doesn't make sense otherwise. Also, I have read that Po4 can react with Iron only if you dump them together... After a few hours apart, the problem should be avoided.

Thoughts?
 
Also, I have read that Po4 can react with Iron only if you dump them together... After a few hours apart, the problem should be avoided.
Not so, which is why you dose alternate days. In the tank the micro iron will become unchelated and react with the phosphate left over from the weekly "macro dump" and become non available to the plants. When I first built my dosing pumps they dosed both macro and micro at the same time (on same timer and simple wiring), not listening to what people were saying "dose alternate days...". Anyway plants started possibly having issues, maybe lack of iron hardly surprisingly, so rebuilt the pumps to alternate day dose and not had any issues since.
 
Not so, which is why you dose alternate days. In the tank the micro iron will become unchelated and react with the phosphate left over from the weekly "macro dump" and become non available to the plants. When I first built my dosing pumps they dosed both macro and micro at the same time (on same timer and simple wiring), not listening to what people were saying "dose alternate days...". Anyway plants started possibly having issues, maybe lack of iron hardly surprisingly, so rebuilt the pumps to alternate day dose and not had any issues since.

I am sorry, but I still don't understand what's the difference of what I am doing now, I am not dosing macros and micros at the same time. I dose macros on WC day (and it is the EI low-light dose given my the calculator at http://rota.la), and micros on the day after. What's the problem with that?? We do the exact same thing!
 
I am sorry, but I still don't understand what's the difference of what I am doing now,
Voodoo you're basically doing a very large increase of PPM of PO4 at the beginning of the week so greater PPM of PO4 the greater reaction between your micros or so the theory goes. The fact you are having problems with your tank is telling you something is wrong. Could be CO2, could be flow, could be light could be ferts (since you're not following the gospel written by Barr). To eliminate nutrients out of the equation it's always the recommendation to fall back to "correct" method with 60-50% water changes. Are you saying it's expensive filling the tank with RO water? Why don't you just use tap water?

Might as well dry dose for a tank that size 75g is roughly 3x20g in teaspoons (I've rounded as I can't be bothered with 3/16ths
day 1 WC + 1/2 KNO3 + 1/4 KH2PO4 + 1.1/2 MgSO4
day 2 1/4 Trace
day 3 WC + 1/2 KNO3 + 1/4 KH2PO4 + 1.1/2 MgSO4
day 4 1/4 Trace
day 5 WC + 1/2 KNO3 + 1/4 KH2PO4 + 1.1/2 MgSO4
day 6 Rest
day 7 Rest
 
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