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EI DOSING USING DRY SALTS

I have found that it is made up of the following but it just confused me as there was no mention of these elements and then just the term CSM+B thrown in there.

Total magnesium - water soluble chelated magnesium 1.5%
Copper - chelated 0.1%
Iron - chelated 7.0%
Manganese - chelated 2.0%
Molybdenum 0.06%
Zinc - chelated 0.40%
Boron 0.04%
EDTA - minimum content 55%

Other than that it is a great article and I am certainly going to get into this. Your plants look awesome too by the way!
Thanks.
 
Its long but well worth reading all 12 pages as it goes into more detail and answers a lot of the questions that most 'newbies' have.
CSM+B supplies micro nutrients such as iron, zinc... which are needed in smaller amounts.

Both sponsors fluidsensoronline and aquariumplantfood sell EI kits.
 
Hi,
CSM+B is just trace mix which is all the Micro fertiliser elements, you purchase it as a trace mix.....try looking at the sponsor sites for what you need. I can't currently link them as I'm on my phone, but AquariumPlantFood UK and the nutrient company sell all you need. Aquariumplantfood do starter EI fertiliser kits which contain everything you will need including dosing bottles and instructions 🙂
Cheerio
Ady
 
Sorry, I was beaten to it 😉....what Iain said!
 
I have been looking into it overnight and am much more educated now. Thanks for the reply though. I have read through a lot of the pages on this tutorial and am going to try it. My only concern is if I should do everything at once. Ie I am going to be changing my trickle filter for an external filter, changing my Co2 injection amount and duration, change my water and start EI dosing all at the same time. I see no point in doing it gradually as you should have them all but just wanted to check if there is any introducing methods.

Personally thinking of starting using the Aquarium plant food starter kit:

Ei Starter Kit - Starter Kits - Dry Chemicals - Fertilisers

Or the TNC IE Kit:

TNC EI Kits | The Nutrient Company

I checked with the water company and test kit and my water hardeness is 6 so not sure if I would use the soft or hard water kit if I went that route?
 
Thanks. I have Just bought the EI Starter kit.
Going with their dose 500ml will last 5 days at 30ml a day in my 150 litre tank. I work away for 14 days at a time so the wife has to feed and look after the tanks. Can I just increase the dose by 3 in the same 500ml of water so one bottle will last 15 days and only need 10ml per day. The answer in my head is yes but I am asking because there must be a saturation point and I have no idea what it is. lol
 
Hi,
Yes, you head is correct. The only problem might be that adding so much powder to 500ml may result in an inability to dissolve all the powder in that volume of water.

Cheers,
 
Dosing pump sounds interesting...

But for now I might just use a bigger 1 litre bottle (from my used TNC lite) to mix a double dose so would last 20 days.
 
TarkMalbot said:
Thanks. I have Just bought the EI Starter kit.
Going with their dose 500ml will last 5 days at 30ml a day in my 150 litre tank. I work away for 14 days at a time so the wife has to feed and look after the tanks. Can I just increase the dose by 3 in the same 500ml of water so one bottle will last 15 days and only need 10ml per day. The answer in my head is yes but I am asking because there must be a saturation point and I have no idea what it is. lol
Click to expand...

You get two 500ml bottles one for macro and the other for micro, you dose them alternating days and miss a day a week. So that means for a 150l tank 30ml a day, you will only use 90ml per bottle per week
 
Hey guys. I've been meaning to read the whole thread just not had the time to sit down and do it.
Wondered if someone could give me a quick answer.

I've been ei dosing for about a month now and all was good until last week when i doubled the salt amounts in the same amount of water (500ml) for both the macro and micro solution as I wanted the bottle to last a bit longer.
stupidly though I forgot I'd done this so all week i've been adding twice as much as i needed and double dosing. Now some of my plants have a brown tinge to them?

I've not changed any thing else in the tank So I can only assume that its the above thats done this? though I'm probably wrong.

Could over dosing ei be the cause of the brown tinge or is it likely to be something else?

cheers.
 
Yes, you are wrong. Here is the something else:
Overdosing does not result in algae. The photos in the original post are of a tank that was fed 3X-5X EI dosing and as you can see from the photos, the tank was algae free, so I can attest to this statement as fact. However, if you are near the lower limit of CO2, it is possible to suffer CO2 related issues because adding more nutrients drives the plant to demand more CO2, just as adding more CO2 drives the plant to demand more nutrients.

A lot of problems are caused by poor or marginal CO2. In fact MOST problems are caused by poor/marginal CO2. High levels of nutrition exposes this weakness.This is one of the reasons The Matrix blames nutrients for causing algae. It's an optical illusion driven by the extreme difficulty of balancing fish health with CO2 injection. If you were to run a test tank devoid of fauna these principles would become obvious very quickly, but most people don't do that, so the result is like juggling chain saws.

If you have uber-expensive discus then you may not want to risk increased CO2, so just reduce the dosing.

A second possibility is that even with double dosing, if the light is too high and if the flow/distribution is less than excellent, and/or if the plants have substantially increased in mass, it may be that there is still not enough PO4.

Without knowing every nuance of your tank configuration it's difficult to analyze, but generally these would be the possibilities, outside of mistakes such as under-calculating dosing and so forth.

Cheers,
 
Thanks for the reply ceg as always straight to the point and understandable.

I am at the lower end of co2 imput and it makes sense now that adding more ferts increases the plants need for co2, so if more co2 isn't available the problems start to occur.

Injecting more co2 isn't an option at the moment so i'll have to reduce the dosing amount back to what I started with.

Looking at this algae guide
James' Planted Tank - Algae Guide
mine looks to be diatoms as I have seen a few spots of build up on the glass and like I say just a faint brown tinge on some of the plant leaves. The cause is confusing as it says this type of algae is seen in newly set up tanks?

Big question is whats the best way to get rid of it?
 
Hi Dan,
You can do a blackout and remove the affected leaves immediately, but the reason James mentions that cause is that usually, people setting up tanks use too much light and there are insufficient levels of bacteria in the filter and sediment, so this combination tends to trigger diatom blooms, normally near the sediment. If it happens in an established setup then that usually points to either too much light or a dirty filter - or both.

Cheers,
 
hmm, adding to the confusion 🙂

200l tank running a fluval 406 and a 206. Lights are on a timer for 6 hours a day and the filters get cleaned regularly.

I did a 50l water change last night and didn't dose any ferts, also had a light prune of the worst affected leaves.
I can see a slight improvement today.

I was going to lay off dosing for the next few days then start afresh with a reduced dose. Would it also be a good idea to reduce the lighting to 4/5 hours as well? I cant raise the lights as they are built into the hood of the tank.

cheers

 
Hi mate,
When you have a plant health issue, reducing the light intensity is always a good policy. Sometimes, reducing the photoperiod length is also helpful, but intensity is far more important. As I mentioned, you can do a blackout or even a "soft" blackout, as I call it, where you just don't turn the lights on for a couple of days.

Cheers,
 
I have bought a twin programmable dosing pump which I plan to use on alternative days for Micro and Macro. I just have a couple of questions regarding frequency and time. Say I am dosing 30ml per day what time should I program it to dose and should I do it all in one go or say 10ml 3 times a day? Thanks.
 
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