I mentioned switching back to DIY ferts soon. On this note I would like to write down my observations, thoughts and ideas and see what other people think, maybe they have some suggestions for me.
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Today marks exactly one month of dosing Tropica Specialised. Its given mixed results I would say. A lot of plants have been complaining about different problems, most notably increased chlorosis in most but not all plants.
Also there has been a fairly significant increase in mobile nutrient deficiencies, so old leaves have gotten ugly and deteriorated much quicker than usual. Ive noted that there has been a bit of a variation in the presentation of such mobile deficiency. To be specific, the oldest frogbit leaves went from looking ugly a certain way, into looking ugly in a slightly different way. I would speculate that this might be lack of a different macronutrient showing itself, but I dont see the point in trying to figure out which one when the overall fertilizer hasnt been working well enough. Gotta keep a firm eye on the big picture here.
About a week and a half ago (12.04) I increased the dosing to three pumps per day in the main tank, to see if an overall increase would do the trick. (So 42 ml weekly in a ~250 l tank). Previous numbers
here.
So lately the tank has been getting;
N 2.251 (NO3 9.96)
P 0.168 (PO4 0.51)
K 1.73
Fe 0.116
Mn 0.066
B 0.007
Zn 0.003
Cu 0.01
Mo 0.003
It hasnt seemed to help.
There's been some notable differences between the main tank and the quarantine tank that im not sure what to make of.
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The frogbit in the quarantine tank is pretty happy actually. I have recently removed all the oldest leaves of the frogbit, so the signs of mobile nutrient deficiency is not visible in these pictures (I gotta stop doing that right before pictures).
But running low there is not a bad thing, as I actually want the quarantine tank running a bit low on N and P. This means the plants are doing their intended job of stripping the water and buffering any differences between filter maturity and increases in livestock. The plants here are for utility only, unlike the main tank where optimal plant growth is wanted.
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The Tonina was extremely pale a little while ago, but it seems to have come around now and doesnt look
too bad in the newest growth.
Still, I can tell that the plants are bordering on chlorosis based on how easily it returns in the frogbit, and the appearance of the slower growing plants like Tonina.
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Overall though, the fertilizer appears to be working decently well for this little tank. I wonder what the big difference is.
Its a pretty small tank with an
actual water volume of about 40 liters. Almost all of the plants have access to atmospheric CO2, but so far only the frogbit is growing fast. (I think its grabbing most of the nutrients first to be honest).
If I calculate the fertilizer based on an actual water volume of 40 L, it gives us NO3 10.38, PO4 0.53, Fe 0.121. The main tank has targets set based on external measurements and not taking into account any displaced water or added water from canister filters, so im a little bit reluctant to draw conclusions based on a direct comparison. If we calculated the little tank based on the external measurements, the numbers above would be lower. But the main tank has more substrate and more plumbing and two large canister filters and a reactor. So idk about all of that, where it actually lands.
We could perhaps say that its likely somewhere close.
But the frogbit in the little tank looks pretty good, and the frogbit in the main tank looks very pale both in new and old leaves.
Im not sure what gives. Differences in competition from submersed plants perhaps?
What has been a success with Tropica ferts is that im pretty sure this means I can rule out any
major issue with the autodoser and fertilizer making.
If my fertilizer issues had something to do with inconsistency or inaccuracy from the autodoser, switching to dosing manually should have made things a lot better.
Id like to take this moment to pat myself on the back as I havent missed a single manual dose
![Happy :happy: :happy:](/forum/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/happy.png)
Theres been one or two close calls where I had to dose after the lights had gone out for the day, but other than that I have been remarkably consistent 😁
I think I can only partially "rule out" an issue with fertilizer making.
This is because I havent been dosing the same amount of micros with Tropica as I have been with the DIY ferts.
So the comparison is not close enough to tell, if that makes sense.
I also dont see how I could compare these two directly to each other, as I would have to dose a very high amount of Tropica Specialized to get up to the DIY micro levels.
The amount of macros in the Specialized would be much higher than desired if I tried this.
It could be done by also using Tropica Premium (only micros and K), but I dont really want to buy a whole bottle of this just to test that out at this point.
There still might be a minor issue with precipitation in my DIY micro mixes, but I will try to iron (no pun intended) that out with this next batch.
Swapping tasty-for-microbes citric acid for less tasty acetic acid (vinegar), and seeing if the fuzzy bits stop appearing in the solutions.
My first thought with switching back to DIY is that I would like to go back to something close to the mix I have been running for a while.
As I have learned from our dear
@KirstyF , the value of having a baseline to work from should not be underestimated.
Particularly I want to set the micros close to the "best working" recipe, that I used in december/january.
That was this;
0.42 ppm Fe (from DTPA/Gluconate 50/50)
0.21 ppm Mn
0.028 ppm Zn
0.028 ppm B
0.0085 ppm Cu
0.012 ppm Mo
0.00014 ppm Ni
Frogbit leaves were large and well shaped, not wavy. Lacked a little bit in overall color, no distinct pattern, if anything then slightly reticulated appearance.
I tried some variations on this recipe after that. First I tried higher Mn (0.3), that lead to the frogbit growing out strongly pinched. Set the Mn level back to previous level.
Then I needed to remake the solutions because they ran out. I decided to round the numbers up to 0.5 Fe (roughly 1.19x for the rest). The plants didnt seem to like this quite as much.
So im thinking that I should go back to precisely those numbers, and reestablish a baseline of decent plant growth. After that I can revisit it and see if I want to try a tweak to something.
My first instinct would be to go straight from current dosing to the tweaks that I think might help, but this has shown to not be the best practice from my experiences so far.
When I can tweak something later on though, my thoughts are that I should shift my thinking from dosing mainly based on what we think the plants need, to dosing more based on how long things are sticking around in the water column.
In other words, I think precipitation and also a lack of precipitation, might be influencing more than we think of how an aquatic micro mix should be balanced.
For example, Fe, Mn and Zn precipitate fairly easily, while Boron does not precipitate as much.
I might also want to account for how well tolerated individual micros are, for example a low tolerance for excess Boron, and a higher tolerance for excess Molybdenum. But thats entering tinfoil hat territory, so ill keep it to myself 😉
If I can get the chlorosis levels in the plants back to how they were at their best point, I think "all the way there" on chlorosis might not be that far away.
I am still curious about why this little tweaking seems to make such a significant difference in my tank, and if there could be factors in my water supply that are making it this way compared to the forum average. But I digress.
Im toying with the idea of reducing the amount of Urea and Ammonia usage in my tank now that im remaking DIY ferts.
The link between "hotter" nitrogen sources and algae is fairly well accepted in the community, even if we dont all agree exactly how or why or in which circumstances it comes into effect.
My thread algae problem has raged on undeterred for quite some time. One thing that has not been tried is going back to a more stable NO3 based macro.
This is not because I think its impossible to run an algae free tank using Urea and Ammonia, but the consensus so far seems to be that doing that requires a lot of other things to be "just right".
Or at least you really have to know what you're doing.
..I rarely know what im doing 😁
So it doesnt seem entirely implausible to me that it has been making my thread algae problem a bit worse, or sustaining it somewhat.
To try to make sense of really complex and difficult topics like algae, I try to do something akin to a mental meta-analysis.
I want to see if I can find a pattern or something in common between the many many sources of opinions, information and user reports on the internet.
For green thread types of algae, my impression has been that they are associated with; instability, a volatile system, maybe one with a major source of organics perhaps (like a bunch of really problematic wood like that one thread on UKAPS that I cant remember..) Organics and ammonia are associated. Or a freshly setup system where the balance has not been established. High light seems to accelerate the issues (unsurprisingly), but lowering the lights alone wont cure it,
unless the cause is one that would pass on its own with time, for example an immature system. Time makes the system more mature, lowering lights help with the extent of the problem, cause passes, algae recedes. There are more than a few user reports that go something along those lines.
My tank is not perfectly stable. But im not convinced that its
unstable enough to alone warrant such a long running bloom of slimy green thread algae. I think there must be more than that alone.
Lets say the tank was running "stable enough" to use Urea as a N source earlier last year. But then the tank's balance shifted significantly enough last fall (from probably many small reasons combined to make a big one), and the thread algae got an upper hand. The tank has received a fairly substantial amount of maintenance and care lately, but still the thread algae seem to carry on mostly undeterred. Increased stability might have helped a little bit, but not nearly enough.
Many of us think that green thread algae can be difficult to get rid of once they have established themselves. I guess this is because they are quite similar to plants in their requirements.
The cause of my bloom does not appear to be something that is passing with time. Because then it should be starting to pass now.
So what is happening that is continuing to give the algae an upper hand in this system?
Speculation: Slightly too hot nitrogen source, "too hot"
based on what my plants are currently able to utilise, and the plants are having some problems with chlorosis and CO2 stability, and especially the last one significantly influences their growth. Lowered plant growth = more potential for algae growth.
What im wondering is, if a "1-2 punch" comprised of a less potent nitrogen source, really strict stability management, coupled with careful treatment with the slightly nasty algaecide, will be enough to allow the plants to regain the upper hand.
(Thats not to say I have to stay with NO3 nitrogen forever. But, I would like to first get the tank running "pretty well" with minimal algae, before thinking about introducing it again.)
What do you think?