Away for a week. Can you 1 week dose?

[William Moore]

I recently got these as a beginner to co2 and plants. Its a daily dose. I'm about to go away for a week and cross my fingers on the tank.. no one can call in for me. I'm doing a water change just before going away.

Question is.. Can I somehow dose for a week?

Also.. I'm using distilled water and after a few days the ferts turn really foggy in the bottle. Is this a bad thing? Or still ok to use? If bad I'll have to mix fresh for say a few days at a time but it's grief as I'm away every week with work.

Many thanks.

 

[Zeus.]

No expert myself, but from my understanding

Weekly or twice weekly single shot dose fine for low tech tank.
Tanks with CO2 benifit from macros and micros but not at the same time as one neutralises the other at the ideal levels needed to get the benifit from the extra CO2 levels.. need to be dosed on different days. You also need higher levels of light to benifit from the CO2 also.
So if using CO2 need daily doses with macros and micros alternating so if you cant be there need some else to do it or an auto doser.
where do you keep your mixed solution? should be a cool dark place.
More specs of you setup would help others help advise you too.

 

[William Moore]

Thanks. Well it's looking like no ferts for a week then sadly.

It's an aqua one vogue tank. 135 litres.
Led lighting. 44w LED. External canister 850l/hr.
Plenty surface agitation.
Heated jbl substrate 2 layers.
Tetras Ottos etc all small fish bar 3 Siamese algae. 2 shrimp amano. 1 went walkies 1st week.

Dual stage reg 'ultimate' from co2supermarket
"Intense" inline diffuser. Sodastream - small cabinet.
Various plants lol. Swords, Monte, ug (barely..browning) Anubias flowering up nicely.

Haven't got time to set up a doser sadly.
I tried two of the Chinese make cheap ones and neither dosed or kept missing doses. (Jebao)
- even they couldn't help why so I gave up after 2 units.

Ferts are kept in dark under tank.
Would fridge help? Just a thought. Typically dose 22ml daily.

Many thanks.

 

[zozo]

need to be dosed on different days.

I read this a lot and wonder who figured it out.. And it seems to apply to aquarium only.. E.g if you grow terrestrial plants on Coco fibre you get 2 bottles of ferts, an A and a B solution, Micros and Macros separated.. According the fact sheet, never mix the raw high concentrated solutions together it will clutter and be rendered into a form of useless gypsum. But once solution A is properly mixed with the water you can procede with mixing solution B and water the plants. There is no saying on any of these products to do it on different days.. I realy wonder why it would be any diferent for aquarium..

 

[ian_m]

No you can't dose in one go. After about 24-48hours any left over the micro elements, which there will be as you have overdosed, will have unchelated and reacted with the macros, so ferts level will quickly drop after 24-48hours, which is why you dose daily.

I once did get someone to come in a dose for me. I premixed the ferts in 20ml labelled bottles and they just tipped the relevant bottle in the tank. Done.
Bottles from here https://www.ampulla.co.uk/Shop-For-...Bottle-&-18mm-White-Screw-Cap/p-170-115-2236/

What I did when going away for 3 weeks.
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/diy-dual-peristaltic-dosing-pump-with-alternate-switching.22332/

Before I built the dosing pump, I left the tank for over a week numerous times, no ferts. Just dose a bit + a tad (???) before you go and turn lighting period down to say 4 hours to slow the tank down. When I came back all fish still alive (I have an automatic fish feeder) and plants weren't as green as I would have liked but quickly recovered once normal regime started.