# Switching to salts, low tech and fish....



## jameson_uk (26 Feb 2018)

I have been using Tropica ferts in my tank for the last year with reasonable success but obviously this is a very expensive.  Looking to make the switch to dry salts but have so many questions....

First off I currently add the Tropica ferts after my weekly water change.  Most material I find is EI based and talks about daily dosing.  My tanks are low tech and I don't want to become a slave but my simple chemistry brain is telling me that if I make up a mix  that is similar to the Tropica ferts then it would be no different to now.  Is this true or is their something they do / add that makes their solution better for weekly dosing?

Next question is fish.  My main tank is pretty much fully stocked which is different to a lot of aquascapes and I see there are a number of ferts which have a flavour that has no N or P for stocked tanks.  I guess EI just says dump in more than the platform targeted will ever need and reset weekly but for more targeted dosing should I put in less N and P?  (Water company says mean NO3 is 27.73ppm so quite a lot to start with)

Next questions will be what to actually buy and whether weekly dosing and stock levels will make any difference here.  Water is pretty hard (12 dKh) so I know I need a different iron chelator to what is in most micro mixes but does this make any other difference?

I know I need to find what works in my tank but just looking for a starting point

Any pointers greatly appreciated


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## Edvet (26 Feb 2018)

Look up Darrel's way of estimating ferts "duckweed index" where you base ferts on the growth of floaters. You can use EI  salts just  in lower dosage ( about one tenth) or add them when the growth of the floaters starts slowing down.


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## ian_m (26 Feb 2018)

Ignore you water companies report, that is for their sampling point on a particular day and not your tap water today.

For low tech you can dose weekly, but you must not dose the macro and micro at the same time as they will react (which is why they are two solutions) producing insoluble iron phosphate, thus removing both phosphate and iron from being available to plants. You must dose a couple of days apart. My mate has a tank with a partially covered single T5 tube, well and truely low light andlow tech, and he doses macro at weekend and micro during the week. He doses about 1/5 to 1/10 to just bung it in size of normal EI dose. Plants grow, fish thrive, changes water when ever can be bothered, slight algae (green film on glass) but fine for him. Far too dim for my eyes, but I am used to high tech tank.

You can always use the EI ingredients to make an all in one dosing solution to dose once a week instead.
http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/allinone.htm

This is it ready mixed, ready to go.
https://www.aquaessentials.co.uk/ne...Path=544_208&zenid=p9i4i2flrsi6s8camiv1rhud06

This is also the same, but just add water.
http://www.aquariumplantfood.co.uk/apf-plant-nutrition-in-bottles-dry.html

Or make/buy a dosing pump to dose solutions daily.
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/diy-dual-peristaltic-dosing-pump-with-alternate-switching.22332/

So plenty of options.


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## ceg4048 (26 Feb 2018)

jameson_uk said:


> I guess EI just says dump in more than the platform targeted will ever need and reset weekly but for more targeted dosing should I put in less N and P? (Water company says mean NO3 is 27.73ppm so quite a lot to start with)


I don't know why people misconstrue this concept so readily. This is not what EI says.
EI says to use an amount of nutrition that will never result in malnutrition.
It's that simple.
Moses did not descend from the mountaintop pre-ordaining that everyone should use any specific values.
The problem becomes complicated because few can ever determine how much is enough to avoid malnutrition.
The recipe is therefore based on the worst case scenario where the hobbyists uses very high lighting and high CO2.
If you are not using these amounts then the recipe can be tailored to your specific needs.
Life becomes even more complicated when people try to figure out how to tailor their needs based on their not-so-extreme configuration.
They use ridiculous test kits to determine the resident amounts of nutrition in their water supply and then get burnt because the test kits report higher values than are actually present.
They trust their municipal water supplier  and get burnt because the supplier reports NPK averages not specific to their homes.
At the end of the day, it becomes a lot easier to simply use the dosing for the extreme end of the spectrum. So this gets labeled as "...dump in more than the platform targeted will ever need..."

True low tech tanks, i.e., tanks not dosed with enriched carbon, whether gas or liquid, have plants with metabolism of about 5X-10X less than in tanks configured the most extreme carbon enrichment. In this case, there is very little need for high dosages.
There is time enough for the breakdown of organic substances such as fish waste into their constituent NPK to feed the plants, however, it was discovered that a weekly or bi-weekly dosing of small amounts of inorganic NPK improved their performance.

Barr's EI method for low tech tanks goes something like this:
Instead of trace mix, consider something like Seachems Equilibrium add about 1/4 teaspoon per 20 USG of tank volume once every week or every two weeks.
Add about 1/8th teaspoon of KNO3 per 20G of tank volume once a week or once every two weeks.
Add about 1/16th teaspoon of KH2PO4 per 20G of tank volume once a week or once every two weeks.

Cheers,


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## rebel (27 Feb 2018)

I reckon just start without anything, just feeding your fish and see how you go.  An All in one mix would be better for you in-terms of convenience.


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## jameson_uk (27 Feb 2018)

The tank has been up and running 18 months and I have been using frogbit to determine the need for ferts.

I have been needing to dose weekly which is why I am looking to switch and save some money.

I realise the water company figure is only indicative but this is about the level I would expect (we are fed from a groundwater source with lots of agricultural run off; in fact our water treatment works had a huge investment a couple of years ago to install new kit to reduce nitrates and keep them down to allowable levels).  This is I also in the same range as I got when I did use (inaccurate amateur) test kits many moons ago when I first setup the tank.  This is the bit I struggle with; EI is about feeding the plants and there is little to no mention of livestock.  In theory I could use ammonia as a source of N which the plants would love but the livestock would be less keen...  Given that fish are sensitive to prolonged exposure to high nitrates, there is a reasonable level present in the water and fish water is being converted too then the only outcome I can see is ever increasing levels of nitrates?  (Even with 50% weekly water changes)

Also is it anything other than iron that needs different treatment due to hard water?  I have seen iron deficiencies quite a lot as when I was using Flourish for micros this uses a chelate which isn't great for hard water.


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## Edvet (27 Feb 2018)

jameson_uk said:


> sensitive to prolonged exposure to high nitrates


Fish can tolerate high nitrates, but if the high nitrates stem from high nitrogen waste, there will be high ammonium and high nitrites too which are very toxic to fish. Only adding nitrates is safe.


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## ceg4048 (27 Feb 2018)

jameson_uk said:


> Given that fish are sensitive to prolonged exposure to high nitrates, there is a reasonable level present in the water and fish water is being converted too then the only outcome I can see is ever increasing levels of nitrates? (Even with 50% weekly water changes)


This is another convoluted misconception perpetuated primarily by Nitrate test kit vendors. They want you to be afraid of Nitrates so that you will buy more of their silly kits. Fish breeders and Discus fanatics took up the baton years ago and have run with it since. So now everyone is inoculated with this idea without ever researching it for themselves.

While it is true that almost any agent in the water can be toxic, toxicity is always a function of concentration. Exactly what concentration induces toxicity is the key.

A lot of the data for Nitrate toxicity comes from studies performed by Environmental Protection Agencies on temperate freshwater waterways, which have little to do with animals native to tropical waterways. Tropicals are much less affected by Nitrate levels than are temperate species.

Even so, if we look at some of the data as an "indication" we will see, as Edvert mentions, that NO3 has a benign effect compared to the effects of NH3 and NO2. It's often difficult to separate the effects of these three Nitrogen compounds because they coexist in the water. Nitrate accumulates in the water as an end product of NH3 and NO2 conversion. So we "measure" NO3 accumulation and assume that the damage is caused by this accumulation, but this is an illusion. The damage is caused by NH3 and NO2 as they are being produced.

Just for grins, have a look at some studies of NO3 toxicity. In these studies, the researchers focus on the concentration of the Nitrogen part of the Nitrate molecules. In NO3 "N" is only 23% by weight of the molecule, so you'll see the expression "NO3-N" expressed in values of mg/L (ppm). So, to achieve a concentration of 1ppm of NO3-N it requires 4.4ppm of NO3. This is another area of confusion where folks completely misunderstand the numbers being reported and they assume that a number like 10ppm NO3-N is the same as 10ppm NO3, when it actually means 44ppm NO3.

Also keep in mind that there is the issue of "acute" toxicity, where the fish are exposed to the compound at a high enough concentration to kill them outright (or within a short period of time), versus "chronic" exposure, where physiological effects of exposure are evaluated over the long term. In the case of acute exposure, you will see an expression such as "72 LC50", which can be interpreted as; "the Lethal Concentration required to kill 50% of the subjects within 72 hours".

Have a look at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653516314436
If you scroll down to paragraph 3 you can see the summary results for juvenile Rainbow Trout:



> Acute toxicity testing with juvenile rainbow trout resulted in median lethal concentrations (_i.e.,_ 96-hr LC50) that ranged from 808 mg/L NO3-N in very soft water to 1913 mg/L NO3-N in hard water. Testing with 6–8 day old _H. azteca_ produced 96-hr LC50 values that increased from 168 to 485 and 921 mg/L NO3-N in soft, moderately-hard and very hard water, respectively (Table 3). A clear reduction in toxicity with increase in water hardness was apparent in tests using both species (Fig. 1).



So on average, to kill 50% of the juveniles within 4 days they needed between 3555ppm NO3  and 8400ppm NO3 depending on the water hardness.
Even for the invertebrate fry the numbers are 740ppm to 4050ppm NO3 concentration.

These numbers are outrageous and we never get anywhere close to them.

For chronic exposure studies on the same species have a look at https://ac.els-cdn.com/S01448609140...t=1519747515_0d3497a7c95083031e173032640cfac7

According to that study:


> Although most water quality variables were controlled, significant differences between treatments for the concentrations of other water quality parameters inhibited definitive conclusions regarding the effect of NO3-N. However,due to the unlikely toxicity of confounding water quality parameters, study results provided strong evidence that relatively low NO3-N levels, 80–100 mg/L, were related to chronic health and welfare impacts to juvenile rainbow trout under the described conditions.



Again, these numbers are about 350ppm to 440ppm NO3, far higher than what we ever see, and even these numbers are suspect due to anomalies with the ability to maintain consistent water parameters.

Here is a interesting article more relevant to tropicals, which studies the effects of NO3 concentration on pathogens attacking guppies
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412016300885

While the authors quite rightly condemn agricultural eutropification of natural water systems, they discovered an interesting anomaly:



> Excessive fertilisation is one of the most pernicious forms of global change resulting in eutrophication. It has major implications for disease control and the conservation of biodiversity. Yet, the direct link between nutrient enrichment and disease remains largely unexplored. Here, we present the first experimental evidence that chronic nitrate enrichment decreases severity and induces protection against an infectious disease. Specifically, this study shows that nitrate concentrations ranging between 50 and 250 mg NO3−/l reduce _Gyrodactylus turnbulli_ infection intensity in two populations of Trinidadian guppies _Poecilia reticulata_, and that the highest nitrate concentration can even clean the parasites from the fish. This added to the fact that host nitrate pre-exposure altered the fish epidermal structure and reduced parasite intensity, suggests that nitrate protected the host against the disease.



In this case the concentration levels were reported in direct NO3 ppm - 50ppm to 250ppm. The test was not to determine the lethality to the fish, but the lethality to the parasite which infected the fish or which was present in the water.

This is an unusual study and I find it fascinating in light of all the hand wringing and hysteria that goes on about NO3. Who knows what other pathogens are inhibited by NO3.

If you search the journals, you can find loads of NO3 toxicity studies and you'll always see number in this range.
Discus breeders are quick to argue that elevated NO3 levels inhibit growth but have a look at a study using highly sensitive salmon:
https://ac.els-cdn.com/S00448486140...t=1519746427_f52496b3e5eddd36d64c5bbd7d2c2d41



> Animals were exposed to 5.2, 10.3 or 101.8 mg/L nitrate-N for 27 days. Upon completion of the trial, the animals were euthanized
> and bled by puncture of the caudal vein. Mean plasma nitrate/nitrite concentrations increased significantly with increasing ambient nitrate-N concentration. Plasma testosterone concentrations displayed a highly significant non-monotonic dose response to increasing nitrate-N concentration, and were elevated at 10.3 mg/L nitrate-N. Plasma 11-ketotestosterone, total thyroxine and total triiodothyronine concentrations did not differ
> significantly between treatments. These results suggest that elevated nitrate can interfere with the synthesis or metabolism of sex steroids, but that Atlantic salmon may be relatively insensitive, in terms of growth and most endocrine endpoints examined, to nitrate-N concentrations up to 101.8 mg/L, and are a promising candidate for production in RAS.



The tested NO3 levels were 21ppm, 45ppm, and 448ppm. If you look at the charts in this article you'll see that there was very little difference in growth rate of the fish.

Do a search of NH3 and NO2 toxicity and you see that the numbers are orders of magnitude lower. These are the real dangers to fish are these two compounds, not to mention that if they are produced organically, their conversion to NO3 requires the consumption of Oxygen, which further is damaging to the fish.

Inorganic NO3 added to the tank does not consume Oxygen and as shown in the studies, the levels we add to the tank has a negligible effect on the fish's health.

You can therefore dose the standard amounts in accordance with EI without any fear whatsoever. What is necessary however is to perform large weekly water changes because the addition of CO2 plus nutrients generates a very high metabolism which produces large amounts of organic waste. It is this waste, which feeds the bacteria an lowers the Oxygen content as the waste breaks down to NH3 and the bacteria feeding on the waste use the Oxygen to convert the NH3 to NO3.

Cheers,


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## jameson_uk (2 May 2018)

ceg4048 said:


> Barr's EI method for low tech tanks goes something like this:
> Instead of trace mix, consider something like Seachems Equilibrium add about 1/4 teaspoon per 20 USG of tank volume once every week or every two weeks.
> Add about 1/8th teaspoon of KNO3 per 20G of tank volume once a week or once every two weeks.
> Add about 1/16th teaspoon of KH2PO4 per 20G of tank volume once a week or once every two weeks.


There is probably enough Tropica ferts left to cover me for this weekend so need to order some salts pretty sharpish 

The only thing worrying me is the micros.   My water is reasonably hard KH=5, GH=12, pH ~7.8.
Most trace mixes seem to use EDTA chelate which I believe is only stable to about pH 7.  AIUI Equilibrium will increase GH which I guess I don't really want to do that.
I am sure I have seen iron deficiency in my frogbit (https://ukaps.org/forum/threads/duckweed-index-says-nitrogen-please.50365/) and I know the Tropica ferts use a good chelate for harder water (http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/traces.htm)

Is this something to actually worry about or not?


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## a1Matt (2 May 2018)

All of the elements in the EDTA chelate will be fine in your ph7.8 water, except for the iron.

I would recommend you buy an Edta chelated trace mix and also Dtpa iron. The two together will do you well.

Clives dosing recommendation is good, and I can also recommend JamesC's allinone mix.

http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/allinone.htm

I dose a modified version of his DIY TPN3 recipe. Let me know if you want details of the mix I use (my water is of similar composition to yours with regards to ph).

I have no issues with precipitation of phosphates and iron with this method.


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## sciencefiction (3 May 2018)

jameson_uk said:


> I am sure I have seen iron deficiency in my frogbit (https://ukaps.org/forum/threads/duckweed-index-says-nitrogen-please.50365/) and I know the Tropica ferts use a good chelate for harder water (http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/traces.htm)
> 
> Is this something to actually worry about or not?



Yes, my water stats are almost identical to yours and iron has always been an issue. You need a weekly dosing in a low tech tank to keep the plants from growing pale. The already affected plants will not get greener but new growth will recover. You need a good iron chelator. In my low techs, similarly hard water, that's my main issue. With emersed plants I have bypassed that with planting the plants in clay pebbles substrate...I dose my tanks with Easy Life Iron and I need very small amounts of it to solve the problem(not sure the chelator used but it works) where with dry ferts with EDTA chelator I needed tons of iron powder....


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## PM (5 May 2018)

a1Matt said:


> All of the elements in the EDTA chelate will be fine in your ph7.8 water, except for the iron.
> 
> I would recommend you buy an Edta chelated trace mix and also Dtpa iron. The two together will do you well.
> 
> ...



Hi, would you mind going into detail about your ferts please? I’m about to set up a low tech aquarium after many years without one, and I also live in Bromley - so basically identical water as you I guess.

Thanks


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## a1Matt (5 May 2018)

Welcome back PM  I've been offline for a few years, but have kept one tank ticking over, which I recently rescaped a little so am back here again too.

I'll start a separate thread, as I have a lot to say and I don't want to derail this one!


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## a1Matt (5 May 2018)

The thread is now up: https://ukaps.org/forum/threads/dos...water-supply-with-an-allinone-solution.52972/


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