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Not really mate, UKAPS went through a phase a few years back where, as they always do, worked out the ingredients of Excel which was Glute based. From there it was just a case of buying the glute and watering it down until it was at the same ratio as was in the liquid carbon products. I bought...

Hiya Mate, E.I is designed to be non limiting but is worked out over 3x3 day splits, I believe that is so the PO4 doesn't react with the Iron in the traces. Either way the "non limiting" part of it is focused around for N and K (the main things plants consume) being Max 3ppm per day. So if...

Hiya mate. there shouldn't be an issue with too much ferts as such so I would look at why the fauna isn't happy which could be more likely the co2. If there is excess ammonia it should only become toxic when the PH rises above neutral. If you are concerned about too much ease back on the E.I...

That's a tricky one mate, general rule of thumb is new leaves iron, old leaves magnesium and N and P affect both but tend to be old leaves first. My initial instinct there was magnesium which I'm assuming you are dosing in line with ei dosing? Growth looks good so considering EI nitrate probably...

Perfect mate, you don't need much mg anyway and you have some nitrate. Now it's time to get on with the bad head of sorting your co2. Turning down your light as given you a bit more room for error.

I think green water, cyan bacteria (green slime) and diatoms (a coating of brown stuff) usually appear when a tank is immature and not biologically stable yet so things should improve with age. Going forward with fertilisers people often worry that they cause algae but this more relates to fish...

Hiya mate, you tend to find that the "all in one fert" solutions are quite week in nutrients and are generally speaking used in lower lighting scenarios. Going by your comments and plants you seem to be aiming for a high tech setup. In general when doing this people tend to aim for a...

Nice one mate, made my day to hear of a victory in the plant world. Don't expect any miracles with the S.Repens, I have some in my tank that are getting along fine, no visible growth to talk about in a non co2 tank but they are all healthy. I would expect it to take many months to see any...

Pull the yellow leaves off the duck weed and watch what happens with new growth. If the new growth is damaged (possibly through lack of iron) they probably won't repair anyway, my understanding is iron can't move to these new leaves. Magnesium should only green up the old leaves as it can move...

Just to add to that mate. Phosphate is potassium phosphate po4 and nitrate is potassium nitrate kno3 so you do cover most of the potassium needs just by dosing these. But if you are dosing n and p light you might also need some extra potassium in the form of potassium sulphate. The recipe for...

Hiya mate, look in the articles section for dosing although this refers to estimate index which is maximum dosing but same applies. Dosing is spli into two types, macro dosing or your NPK and micro dosing all the trace elements. Plants feed on mainly the npk but they also require all the...

I'm not on Apple mate and but I'm at serious risk of hijacking a thread here so I'll take it over to the correct one. Good luck to the op with their nitrate problem but like it's been said I think there's been some over dosing going on. Shouldn't take long to get the levels back down with...

I wish I could get @zeus calculator working. Looks proper tasty.

Yes buddy epsom salts is the one. I've just had a quick look at the TNC stuff and there is the same amount of magnesium in both lite and complete albeit in small amounts. My understanding of using Duck weed to look for deficiency is new leaves would be iron, old leaves potassium and nitrate...

They look a good size so maybe Nitrate isn't the issue. Are you adding any Magnesium? To be fair I would probably still go back to complete. The water report isn't cast in stone just an average of when they were testing. Over time with just partial water changes in a well planted tank it won't...

What Konsa said mate, switch to something with N and P, a tank that size dosing dry salt will be far more cost effective. Plants aren't thriving so algae are gaining a foot hold, the yellowing leaves are a sign that you may be low on nitrate so not thriving=algae. You maybe also need to up the...

Just to add, if you're running a tank that requires EI levels of Iron dosing it is highly unlikely you won't require additional N and P.

That's 162ml 2 to 4 times per week mate if you're aiming for EI levels. The calculation on the right is telling you what the 1x162ml dose is adding to your tank. This would be to reach a weekly target of around 0.5ppm of Iron so you could go 2 or 3 162ml doses in softwater and maybe need the 4...

Macros NPK can pretty much be kept indefinitely regarding shelf life AFAIK. Traces are sensitive to light and the water you mix it with, My tapwater is quite high in po4 so I use rain water for mixing traces. Doesn't really matter how you mix them but you do need to take into account solubility...

Will do cheers

@Andrew Butler why don't you give the recipe of James planted tank a shot based on the Tropica TPN+ Recipe number 3 DIY TPN+ (3) 48g Potassium Nitrate 2.2g Monopotassium Phosphate 17g Magnesium Sulphate Heptahydrate (Epsom Salts) 0.5g E300 Ascorbic Acid 0.2g E202 Potassium Sorbate 5g EDTA...

Yeah thanks Ian, was just being lazy if I'm honest as I add some white vinegar sitting here. Going to pop into Wilkos later and grab some, they have some in their homebrew dept. Was looking at their Wine stabiliser also as it's potassium sorbate but apparently it also contains sodium...

Out of curiosity is Distilled Malt Vinegar any good, the type you put on food. I have some of that but no Citric.

Hi Konsa, I tend to mix my traces with rainwater. My tapwater is extremely soft but if I'm to believe my tapwater report and test kits it's also quite heavy in PO4 so I use rain so the PO4 doesn't react with the Iron. I do get a little bit something floating about in the bottle like a fungus now...

I'm wondering if the reason might be that in most if not all all-in-one solutions the N and P are far lower than the solutions we tend to mix up when doing EI premixed. I also notice that in TNC Complete they use FeEDTA. The fluid is green in TNC and brown in Tropica Premium and Green in Tropica...

I don't tend to buy it from eBay and stick to known suppliers. There was a thread in here about people buying salts off there and they were a bit spurious. There was also people selling kno3 containers which said didn't contain any salt just container only to get round eBay policy but it was all...

Yeah I think that's just Ebay's policy but for all other online shops it's business as usual. Not sure if they have any restrictions on quants but you seem to be able to buy in 500g bags as many as you want...

I'm getting confused now, are we talking about in Egypt? Most of our sponsors sell Pot Nitrate to individuals in the UK

I believe you can actually make Potassium Nitrate from stuff you can buy from your local store. Not sure how much you would be able to make and would depend on the size of your tank whether it would be cost effective. You can use instant Ice packs which contain Ammonium Nitrate and mix with Lo...

I'll second on the fern, to me a translucent tip on fern I see as new growth rather than a deficiency. ferns tend to grow slowly in shaded areas so maybe exposing them to higher light just means they are growing faster than they can deal with it. Some plant just prefer to grow slower.

Got that the wrong way round. I ran without co2 for probably about six months, started adding some fert then introduced co2. Seem to get the plants established without encouraging algae then once you hit the Algae encouraging phase the plants have already won the war. seems like if you start out...

Cheers Clive, I was also rapidly coming to that conclusion. Was having one of them days Sunday when I had the thousand yard stare at the tank contemplating the what ifs, realised there was too many what ifs too contemplate :D Couldn't really come up with anything definitive so it's back to good...

Just been looking at the figures the graph was built up off which makes things a bit clearer, based on the last 8 weeks stable tests on average, pretty much consistently tank TDS rose by 21ppm over the course of a week. On the week of growth and filter change the tank rose by 36ppm, I wonder if...

For sure there's quite a lot of things to take into account that could affect the reading, in the big scheme of things admittedly the jump isn't that much but it is apparent. If you look at the trend you can see there are few anomalies other than about week 15 which was after a prolonged spell...

I guess to summarise, just wondering if you can use a TDS pen to get an idea of ferts in a low tech tank where plant growth is sub optimal but maybe in the case of higher energy and co2 it would give a false positive reading if you like as the amount of ferts consumed is masked by the waste...

You seem to be well informed ED :shh:

Interesting one, I use a TDS meter more for the fish than the plants although I can glean some ball park fert information from the results combined with plant health monitoring. I dose the same amount of ferts per week and test TDS just before and just after water change weekly. My water is very...

If you have some time before you go away mate why not knock an all in one batch up of your own ferts and give it a trial run while you are there to monitor it? Failing that just buy Dennerle ferts to go with it, it's only a temporary measure anyway so will still be cost effective.

Is it? Not sure about that mate, why would it only work with their ferts? I think it will just release any liquid at the same rate. Either way, whatever it releases while you're away is better than non right?

I was thinking that Clive, I was more meaning compared to plants that have came from somewhere ready submerged and even possibly co2 enriched like from someone else tank. Totally agree though about ramping up lighting gradually over time on newly planted setups. Lot of people just want to get...

Would the only difference in treating plants grown in gel be to keep the lights low for the few first weeks? I'm thinking they've lived in a very co2 rich environment upto being submerged so you don't want to push them too hard with lighting until they have got used to submerged life where co2...

You don't mate and as mentioned it doesn't matter if you are or not. Set the RGB values to make the plants look greener to your eyes. Between 6000 and 8000 is suggested because this colour range is yellower and warmer making greens looks natural. Going higher makes the lights whiter and a bit...

Hard to weigh up this mate, are you adding co2 or just liquid carbon? I think earlier you mentioned you were injecting gas. If you're injecting gas then the air stone wants to be knocked off during gas and lighting on and just put on at night as the air stone will drive off the co2 you are...

Hiya mate, the fluval 205 is a small filter for a 200 ltr tank. Looking at the stats it runs at about 680 lph. When you put highish light and inject carbon dioxide into the tank you need to have good circulation around the plants. The general rule of thumb we use is 10x the volume of the tank...

Could also be retrospective damage as well mate, before changing anything cut off the affected leaves and see if it does it again. The leaves won't repair themselves anyway. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

Does seem like a fine line at times. Maybe look at the flow and make sure that there's good circulation around the affected plants. I was in the same boat as you, anytime I got my co2 what is said to be right for the plants my fish would complain. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

BTW @ceg4048 I have a hot tip for a horse 3.30 at Aintree 16/1 odds, I'll paypal you the money and you can put the bet on. If we put a pound on each way we should get...16/1 placed is a quarter of the odds plus the pound we put on less the tax which means we should get something back at least...

At least you're consistent :) I don't know about that one pal, the academy my daughter goes to has some real high end equipment, VR stuff and very interactive. I don't think it matters what's available, when you're a teenager school is just boring whatever on offer. I often say to her I can't...

Haha, look forward to it mate. No reason to doubt your integrity, I'm sure you'll give me my fair share. [emoji6] Now money, that's a different matter all together. For some reason my maths improves where money is involved. Never really got anywhere at school. Not through lack of intelligence...

I appreciate that has limited applications my friend but one day that will come in handy. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

Now if you need to retrieve a rubber brick from the bottom of a swimming pool by somebody in pyjamas, I'm your man right here. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

I didn't understand any of that. but then again I left school with a beginners swimming certificate. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

Hmm 13.6 can't remember now haha, I think it was the average of the 3. So assuming for arguments sake you have 100ltrs of water in your tank (obviously after you've removed 50ltrs for the change) and this 100 ltrs has 0ppm k in it. You pour in 50 ltrs of water which has 40.8ppm of K in it then...

Nah I'm talking crap, I see what you mean about the bad head. Each dose of N and P is 6.6 so three times per week is 19.8ppm weekly plus your 13.6ppm water is 33.4ppm weekly K but still in the 20 / 30ppm range, just at the top end. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

The beauty of dosing EI is you don't have to worry if the ferts are right. The doses recommended in the previous post are worked out that you couldn't possibly need anymore than that. That frees you up to spend time making sure the co2 and tank cleanliness is on point. The purpose of the water...

In fact thinking about it, if you dose EI at 20ppm N and 1ppm P weekly that roughly equates to adding 6.6ppm K brought in on the N and P so if you add that to the 13.6ppm constituted water in total weekly you are adding 20.2ppm K to the tank which sounds about spot on for the EI range of 20 to...

I think another way of looking at it mate which might clear your head would be that each gram of the stuff you add to 100ltrs of water raises K by 1.36ppm so if you add 7.5 grams to 100 that would be 10.3ppm as you are only using 25ltrs that would be 40.8ppm Now this is where it falls over lol...

Yeah, Osmocote does the same thing. Not sure how these things are made or whether the bead that gets leftover is purely there for transporting the nutrients which are coated on it but eventually the beads do make their way to the surface. Just syphon them out or pick them out with the king...

I do the same. Noticed you can get empty organic gelatine caps on auction sites that you can fill yourself with whatever, not sure if these have any issues once dissolved in the water though. I capture rain water for my fert bottle mixes these days. Started just with the traces as my tapwater is...

Starting to suffer from Frogbit envy now :meh: I think we should have a bit of a Frogbit competition like they do with those massive pumpkins :D Side effect of the competition will be the rest of your plants will love it..which can't be a bad thing.

Just an observation, been looking at mine and @tayloss his appears to grow out and away from the centre of the plant whereas mine seem to grow over the top of each other. It would appear that the yellower leaves are the ones underneath and these tend to be the ones that fall off. Going off one...

Maybe that's it, they prefer a dirty tank with plenty to eat. Without co2 holding them back they can just get on with feeding and converting this in to plant mass. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

They are looking healthy! Totally different to the ones in mine but mine are just starting to make a come back. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

Maybe lighting could be a factor mate if you notice them looking different in different tanks. When my tank was running with nothing but daylight I found they seemed to have a smaller root system. I built the light back up gradually over a couple of months and find myself back at 100% lighting...

Couple of GBR shots, apparently I caught them on their bad sides ;) love these fish when they are not falling out. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

I think this is where EI comes into effect, it eliminates the guess work out of fertilisation. If you suspect that there are some issues just dose full EI for a month or so and see if anything changes. It's part of the elimination process. I think combining the two methods EI/DWI is the two most...

No problem buddy, I think they will ship up to 4 pounds for the same money so maybe in your interest to get whatever else you need up to that weight and save on shipping. Pottasium nitrate is what you will use the most of but obviously were starting to get into pyrotechnics. Sent from my...

These ship internationally up to 4lbs in weight for $15 Nutritrace CSM + Boron Nutritrace CSM+B 1 lb, a micro nutrient mix, See mixing and dosing instructions in the FAQ's. Chemical analysis found in more information and FAQ's. Graduated dispenser bottle is an excellent tool for mixing and...

I just based it off buying 1KG off one of our sponsors and Royal Mail Website estimate to ship a box under 2KG to Brazil. Maybe try emailing our sponsors see if they will ship to you but again, I would imagine shipping from USA would work out more cost effective. Can't see you having any issues...

Will no one international ship you? I know its not going to be cheap buy you don't use a great deal of traces. Maybe worth the initial investment in the long run compared to commercial ferts. When I looked before out of curiosity it would cost £60 ish to ship 1KG of traces from UK including the...

My worry is that out of all the information in this topic which would probably answer 90% of the posts on the board if read thoroughly the only part that has stuck in my mind is.. :D:D:D:D Probably the reason I left school with no more than a swimming certificate.

There's a hour of my life I'm not getting back but well worth it :thumbup: I don't know how I keep missing these posts after spending most of my life on this board.

Nice one, get some pictures of the tank up as well, we like to look at other tanks here ;) If you've only just recently started the tank the Journal section of the board is a good place to be. When people can see pictures of your tank developing and have all the information regarding lighting...

2ml I'm assuming you're dosing liquid carbon not gas? Liquid carbon doesn't gas off, it does degrade over 24hrs and the carbon gets used by the plants. Dose is fine but you can up it a bit. Lot of people here dose 2 or 3x recommended dose if they have lots of plants which also has anti algaecide...

Sulfur? If you mean potassium sulphate you can see from the chart that if you dose KNO3 at 9.56ppm and PO4 at 1.12 ppm dosed 3 times per week you would get 6.65ppm potassium sulphate per dose or 19.95ppm weekly so extra potassium sulphate isn't required when dosing nitrogen and phosphate at...

I knocked this up some while back when I was lowering salts for the purpose of breeding. I was trying to get an idea of when potassium sulphate under dosing might become an issue when reducing ferts assuming that my tank is quite heavily stocked and I was using floating plants as a canary that...

Just to add mate, not sure why your product says how many mg per teaspoon but just make sure you have Epsom salts with nothing added just pure Epsom. Some of these products can have other things in like a hint of lime or other things depending of it's intended purpose if for human consumption so...

Hello mate, like @ceg4048 says there's no need to worry too much about magnesium as its one of those elements that you need some presence of and the plants will use it so you get a bit of tolerance and no need for being too exact. Ceg doesn't worry about the amount of salt because he has ran...

Couple of teaspoons, EI recommends 10ppm magnesium 1tsp is about 5 gram and 5gram raises 100 ltrs to 5ppm Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

Your plants will be fine as long as you have included magnesium (epsom salt) in your EI mix. If you live in UK most water doesn't have any in and the shells will be adding calcium which will raise GH but in KH. GH is the total of permanent hardnes + temporary hardness. KH comes under temp hardness.

No problem brother, stay frosty, it's just a hobby. Hope you have more luck with your new ferts which seems to be working out for you. Sorry to the admin for putting up brand names so feel free to delete until it's proven either way.

Ok, like I pointed out earlier, in post one you clearly pointed out they were APF branded so I was reading your replies, whether you named the 3rd party supplier makes no difference we all know which ferts you mean which I pointed out if you read that bit? Secondly I come in here to listen...

We all have doubts about test kits well documented and po4 seems to be one of the worst, so we going to pull someone's business to bits with a £7 test kit from the LFS? Just to add, I have a test kit and some of that branded po4 so I'm tempted to see what happens just out of curiosity but my...

:D Having a bad day @ManDrawer I think you're protesting a bit too much. No one's saying you have to defend yourself or suggesting you are wrong are they? People are just looking at two possibilities here both equally questionable. The chance the supplier has a faulty batch, which must be a big...

Would doing a po4 test with just deionised water in then dropping a couple of grains of your po4 salt into it make a difference?

Hmm tricky one, so that's three people all with the same ferts, all showing 0 with standard test kits (I assume) and a sample that got lab tested by Darrels colleague shows that it is indeed potassium phosphate.

Just an idea, when testing in macro solution I would imagine N and P are in quite concentrated amounts, would this not throw the test?

I was meaning OP and Dan Darrel, yours was lab tested. :)

Are people testing for po4 using the salt in pure water or in tank water, I appreciate po4 tests are generally grossly out but there are also other things in tank water that could mask po4 in the tests possibly?

What about the likes of copper built into most traces? I know you aren't a shrimp keeper and I'm not sure what levels shrimp will tolerate. Just wondering at what point copper might become an issue? I also hear that tannins/humic acids help keep metal toxicity down in soft water. I generally...

I think inadvertently you might have named a brand if I'm reading this right but it's OK it's been cleared up now. If you're not sure what I mean pm me and maybe you can ask a mod to change it as your ability to edit that post might be gone now. Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk

Yeah, it looks the part I have to admit. Sort of top layer fresh snow.

I've came across this issue before especially with R Butterfly. I think it came down to aiming for slightly different values plus dosing was recommended for 2 to 4 days. That's a good one @zozo linked, never seen that one before plus the one on James Planted Tank is simple enough and straight...

What's it look like when you compare it to other salts? I find po4 looks like crystal snowflakes (best I can describe :D) when dropped in the water. Magnesium looks like sugar, potassium sulphate is fine like salt and kno3 slightly larger and clumps together in the container. Maybe you could...

Yeah you can as long as you don't dose both macros and micros on the same day. They'll be fine for one day, if dosing EI there's probably more than enough anyway. Just start a day later and swap your days so if you dosed traces tuesday dose macros and divide the missed dose and add to the other...

Only just came across this. Interesting concept, looks a bit difficult to set up but I can see it having some use for people going on holiday when they have no one to dose for them. Maybe people could get away with using one with an all-in-one mix.

Can you set the pump to dose alternate days?

How much volume does your tank hold and can you only dose every day?

Not sure if this may be of help but it's a sheet I put together for dosing a 100ltr tank at EI schedules. It's based on dosing 20ml of macros every other day and 5ml micros every other day with one day off before WC to achieve the correct amount of ferts. I guess you could mess with the figures...

Same would apply to Ireland as well as that was also a connected land mass with England. Hence the legend that St Patrick chased all the snakes out of Ireland but in reality the snakes couldn't get to Ireland, by the time England was warm enough for snakes the ice had melted and we had the Irish...