• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Practical application of lean fertilizer dosing

Why is the Lean Team not allowed to experiment? Maybe if you let them try they may fail. What's the risk?
No one is saying not to try it, what we are saying is that said experts have shown very little evidence of it working other than post a few random photos of what they have achieved with very little detail and probably comes with a lot of caveats too! Some of them only registered to post in the "lean dosing" thread to stir it up a little more ;)

I am under no illusion that I will be able to pull this off in my first attempt.
We would rather your first attempt was a great planted tank, and then tweak it ;) let the so-called experts create details journals for us all to follow ;)
 
Some of them only registered to post in the "lean dosing" thread to stir it up a little more ;)
Yes I am very interested in their work. Been reading about it for some time and now they are so close to try it publicly in real time. But they are clearly being discouraged from doing so. Why not let them try and see what happens?
 
But they are clearly being discouraged from doing so

I am not discouraging anybody and feel nobody else is.
I am under no illusion that I will be able to pull this off in my first attempt
Just need some 'grit' and stick to it. Nobody believed me when I was 23yrs old and said I was going to be a dentist and doing my 'O' levels eight years later I was a dentist and now retired, they are still working;) Think big and long term :thumbup:
 
Yes I am very interested in their work. Been reading about it for some time and now they are so close to try it publicly in real time. But they are clearly being discouraged from doing so. Why not let them try and see what happens?
Indeed, like I have said already, why don't these members publish an article/journal in the forum, explaining how the results were achieved, with details on equipment, parameters etc.. what worked well, what didn't work well, how it was fixed, how long did these experiments last for, and the end result. Also try and word it in a way that the average user can understand so that it can be followed, registering on the forum and throwing a few random posts with minimal information and a couple of photos doesn't give them much credibility!
I personally want to see those articles/journals, I am up for trying it also, when I know what to test and I know the process that was followed to the letter and what caveats for me to look out for when trying this, it won't be as simple as the processes we are used to.
 
9 pages already lol.

@MichaelJ Hey mate you've absolutely nothing to lose that can't be fixed, and chances are you'll gain a lot of firsthand knowledge into how aquatic plants and nutrients interact.
This new found wisdom may well confirm the majority of people's opinions, or it could well backup what happi is prescribing, who knows.

I tried it and for me it wasn't the correct approach, it has however left me dosing far less fertiliser than I was previously, for me that counts as a learning curve and ultimately a little knowledge gained.

If the human race wants to evolve then sometimes we go out on a limb and experiment.

Just my 2 penneth worth 😀
 
I hear you @Zeus. It also didn't jive with my understanding either, but saw enough anecdotal evidence to try it out - here is an example:



I am under no illusion that I will be able to pull this off in my first attempt. I don't even know if we know all the details here that made it work... I hope I have the persistence to keep it going even if I fail my first few attempts. I think you would agree that this would be pretty cool to replicate and understand? :cool:

Cheers,
Michael
LOL see this is why it's so confusing. This is my friends Sudipta's tank. Has nothing to do with the Happi method.

This is a softwater non CO2 tank that doses Thrive shown in peak condition when temps stay low (70-74). I've spoken to Sudipta extensively about this tank. Right now it's a unicorn. Most of the "brain trust" that I know won't even contemplate it as it's such an outlier.

This tank has nothing to do with lean dosing or the Happi ratios/recipes/ingredients method. It is something completely different and so far pretty much one of a kind. He does have a friend who posted a couple of pics once of a similar set up a while back but was not heard from again.

My advice is that if this is your goal that you become friends with Sudipta. There is a lot more going on here than meets the eye, and in my opinion nothing in this thread is really going to help you. I'd go to the source.
 
High light low-energy can be done if all the nutrients are locked up in the substrate. It’s how I used to run my low-energy soil substrate tanks (no CO2 or water column dosing) many years ago. However, it’s still a very fine balancing act. Algae will inevitably creep in from the edges if tank maintenance isn’t kept on top of.

However, as to growing “difficult” plants that way, I never managed it. In my experience, all other factors being equal, effective and efficient CO2 flow and distribution is the key to that. Further, surely there will be far too many confounding factors to reach any sort of definitive conclusions, even with a well designed control?

As far as I know a true experiment always includes at least one control group that doesn’t receive the experimental treatment. Without a control group, it’s harder to be certain that the outcome was caused by the experimental treatment and not by other variables. I think that is at the crux of the apparent controversy here and perhaps a source of confusion. Plus there is a degree of trust that the outcome will be genuinely portrayed without bias.
 
Right now it's a unicorn.
I've been in tech all my working life as a researcher and engineer working for companies everyone here would be familiar with. If I could count on my hands how many times I have heard people dismissed ideas because they were outliers, unicorns, not "broadly applicable" or "users wouldn't be interested in that".... or even say some idea was the stupidest idea he ever heard and present the same idea a couple of weeks later as his own .... well, lets just say I would have a lot of hands :lol:

Cheers,
Michael
 
that doses Thrive

I think its thrive S that sudipta uses, or used, not sure if or how that differs from standard thrive.
Also worth noting Michael his ph is around 5.75.
Anyways, here's what's in thrive s.

GUARANTEED ANALYSIS​

Total Nitrogen(N) 0.43%
0.43% Water Soluble Nitrogen(N)
Available Phosphate(P2O5) 0.14%
Soluble Potash(K2O) 5.5%
Magnesium(Mg) 0.32%
0.32% Water Soluble Magnesium(Mg)
Calcium(Ca) 0.03%
Sulfur (S) 0.76%
0.76% Combined Sulfur(S)
Boron(B) 0.008%
Iron(Fe) 0.38%
0.38% Water Soluble Iron(Fe)
Manganese(Mn) 0.168%
0.168% Water Soluble Manganese(Mn)
Molybdenum(Mo) 0.0006%
Zinc(Zn) 0.0036%
0.0036% Water Soluble Zinc(Zn)

Derived From: Potassium Nitrate, Potassium Phosphate, Potassium Sulfate, Potassium Chloride, Magnesium Sulfate, DTPA Iron, Manganese Sulfate, Boric Acid, Zinc Sulfate, Sodium Molybdate.
 
My advice is that if this is your goal that you become friends with Sudipta. There is a lot more going on here than meets the eye, and in my opinion nothing in this thread is really going to help you. I'd go to the source.
Well I was actually planning to reach out to him at some point. He is a Biochemistry postdoc associate at the University of Minnesota, no less. Not too far from where I live - I will ask him to come over and pour some of that unicorn dust into my tank :lol:

Cheers,
Michael
 
disclaimer: this is not aimed at anyone in particular. just at the thread in general.

Happi does say that N should be higher than K, but he also says ratios are important, he has said this numerous times, if you have better growth with higher K, say you have high fish load, rich substrate or something providing extra N then dose more K if you'd like. He has repeated this to me numerous times, he even recommended me to try higher K like macek. if EI isn't set in stone we can say the same about happis dosing. Happi says elevated K is unlikely to cause any issues, but he doesn;t see any need for it, why add unnecesarry ferts/tds if you know what you're doing. (this does not apply to beginners starting off with EI)

If you look at maceks tanks you will see he has very good plant growth across a huge variety of species., he doesn;t discount the effect of micro-tox, K-Mg antagonism, B-Ca balance etc. I think there's a reason he's able to grow a huge variety of plants from so called nutrient hogs to plants that prefer a leaner collumn all in very good condition at the same time. Maceks micros were based off of happis recipe with a few tweaks such as chelators. Happi encourages modifications of his recipes and continues to do so, both in private and on the forum, and I don't see anyone claiming anywhere that these ratios or formulas are "magic". Infact I notice quite the opposite, like I said before he encourages people to try different doses to find the right amount as he has done with me.



LOL see this is why it's so confusing. This is my friends Sudipta's tank. Has nothing to do with the Happi method.
but they still believe in many of the same fundamentals.

1. urea/nh4 source.
sudipta uses root tabs every few months that should contain ammonnia/urea . nutrient rich substrate containing nh4.
happi uses ammonia containing salts to fertilise the water collumn and rich substrate as well.

2. low co2.
sudipta doesn't run co2.
happi has ran his tanks at 10-15ppm co2 with high light

3. high light
sudipta uses chihiros fixtures over 100 par at substrate.
happi uses t5 or led fixtures with high par at substrate, around 100 par.

4. don't disturb substrate often
sudipta very rarely uproots plants or disturbs substrate.
happi discourages substrate disturbance as he found it can cause issues in lean tanks. this is to do with influx of N, co2 messed up yahda yahda yahda.

5. softwater (specifically referring to kh here)
sudipta runs his tanks with very little kh, this is to promote uptake of nutrients such as Fe which are negatively affected by higher co3. and also maximise available co2.
happi runs his tank with very little kh, most of the time, none. this is again, to maximise uptake of what little nutrients he is dosing.

now here is where their ideas get a bit different, but I think I know why.
sudipta uses higher gh, this could be because thrive contains higher traces.
thrive shrimp adds roughly 4ppm No3 for every 10ppm K. and 0.8ppm fe for 10ppm K ( let me know if i've gone horribly wrong please!) and sudipta has a gh of roughly 6.
while I couldn't find the exact amount he is dosing, I doubt it is more than the above, and if he were to tweak the dosing and lower gh, I'm sure he could get away with much less Fe. Sudipta uses high gh, this is probably helping him with the high Fe and subsequent levels of traces. Happi doses much much much less micros, some times less than 0.05ppm Fe weekly, but he also has very low gh as well, often going under 1dgh.

now, I'd say that their tank methods are pretty similar, wouldn't you say so too? like it has beenn repeated countless times in this thread, dosing is a small piece of the vast puzzle that is our planted aquariums.
 
Last edited:
Well I was actually planning to reach out to him at some point. He is a Biochemistry postdoc associate at the University of Minnesota, no less. Not too far from where I live - I will ask him to come over and pour some of that unicorn dust into my tank :lol:

Cheers,
Michael
I strongly encourage you or anyone to reach out to him, because this is only going to help the hobby and the hobbyist.
 
As far as I know a true experiment always includes at least one control group that doesn’t receive the experimental treatment. Without a control group, it’s harder to be certain that the outcome was caused by the experimental treatment and not by other variables. I think that is at the crux of the apparent controversy here and perhaps a source of confusion. Plus there is a degree of trust that the outcome will be genuinely portrayed without bias.

Think this is why @MichaelJ pushing forwards with a journal and documenting his findings will be fruitful. It’s effectively a single sample case study, perfect for investigating extreme examples of the distribution. Needs to create, or find, an extreme example to investigate first though.

Locationally this is where you would bet the first inklings of a paradigmatic shift may exist. But it is a single sample case study, generalisability is not what it does.

My advice is that if this is your goal that you become friends with Sudipta. There is a lot more going on here than meets the eye, and in my opinion nothing in this thread is really going to help you. I'd go to the source.

Best advice yet on this thread. Room to talk with a peer. Room to be wrong. Potential to find out something you may never have even known was important to the puzzle.

hmmm.... It escapes me why the Mods/Admins are in on mocking this conversation? We genuinely tried to frame this conversation to avoid a repeat of the failure of the "Lean dosing pro and con"-thread where we had to wade through a bunch of noise to pick up on each others reply... we obviously failed.. Badge me as sensitive, but I can't help feeling just a little bit that this is a sign that this conversation is not really welcome here on UKAPS.

That post was light humour, with a new member who was previously banned from the last forum for speaking his mind, with a mod being true to his character, on a thread that the admins and mods have worked pretty hard at keeping on track. Could argue we’re quite a welcoming group of folk…

Granted those were clips of Titanic… truly awful movie and very offensive. Apologies.

Nothing has been shut down, no one’s ideas are being edited/invalidated/removed, there is no division to speak of. In fact this conversation is being facilitated and has sat at the top of the thread board for quite some time.
 
while I couldn't find the exact amount he is dosing

Taken from one of his fb posts last year, I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong.

"I am using an all in one liquid fertilizer (ThriveS) which I add 2-3 times a week (2-3 mL every time). I also occasionally insert individual osmocote root balls deep under the substrate below some of the demanding plants.
I have an oversized hob filter (aquaclear 70) for my 20 gal tank"
 
"I am using an all in one liquid fertilizer (ThriveS) which I add 2-3 times a week (2-3 mL every time). I also occasionally insert individual osmocote root balls deep under the substrate below some of the demanding plants.
how big is is tank again?
 
so he is underdosing.
so he should get less than this
Screen Shot 2022-04-13 at 22.59.37.png
 
If he's adding the full 9ml then it would be this.

Your addition of 9 ml (equivalent to 1 tsp + 1/2 tsp + 1/4 tsp + 1/16 tsp + 1/64 tsp ) Thrive S to your 20gal aquarium adds:
Elementppm/degree
K5.646678
N0.511173
P0.073704
Fe0.451734
Mg0.451734
B0.010699
Co0.000476
Mn0.225867
Mo0.00107
Zn0.005944
Ni0.000004
 
now, I'd say that their tank methods are pretty similar, wouldn't you say so too? like it has beenn repeated countless times in this thread, dosing is a small piece of the vast puzzle that is our planted aquariums.
In my opinion you are really stretching here. Thrive S does not contain Urea. He puts a few individual osmocote bulbs under a few plants, much like Xiaozhuang does. I doubt he is getting much or any Urea from that little amount.

Other than low dKH and high light (about 80% of the high tech tanks out there) the only similarity is not uprooting often.

So like I said, I think you are really, really stretching framing Sudipta's tank as anything like the Happi method.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top