Daily dosing with a dosing pump

[jsiegmund]

I've bought myself a cheap Chinese dosing pump (Jebao DP-4) because I kept messing up my daily doses of ferts. So now I have the pumps, those should help to keep more stable levels of ferts inside my tank.

At the moment, I do alternate doses of Ferrdrakon, KNO3 and KH2PO4 (so in total a 3 days cycle). I want to combine those into one day, but I'm not sure what would be the best timing schedule. I read about the all-in-one solution, but for now (due to stock) I'm going to stay with what I have.

So what would you guys do? Micro's in the morning and macro's in the evening? Or even multiple doses during the day? The pump is pretty advanced in it's schedules so I can go crazy with it if I wanted to, but simple is better imho.

One good tip I already got: use a dosing bottle (like this one) and stick the pump hose in the upper compartment. That way, when you ever make a mistake or the pump fails, it can never pump the entire contents of the bottle into your tank. Depending on your dosing and bottle size, a weekly squeeze during water change should be enough for most setups.

 

[ian_m]

just dose micro one day, macro next nice and simple , job done.

Don't worry about overdosing I had a pump timer failure and dumped 1litre if macro into 180litre tank pushing nitrate to 300ppm. Were fish bothered, nope, did I get algae, nope. I was peeved ad wasted 1litre of EI solution....

 

[jsiegmund]

Ok, would there be any downside to the morning / evening approach though?

 

[ian_m]

Ok, would there be any downside to the morning / evening approach though?

Probably not.

However:-
- The macro and micro will react to produce insoluble iron phosphate, which is then unavailable to plants. This is why you dose alternate days.
- Most people that invent their own variation of EI always end up with issues either algae or plant problems. All the original EI research was done with alternate days dosing.

You can of course make an all in one solution, as below. However, follow the ingredients 100%, they are all needed and missing one off as you can't get it will negate having an all in one.
http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/allinone.htm

I wouldn't bother with your messing around with dosing bottles, just put the pump input pipe into a 500ml or 1l bottle, job done. I suspect running out of ferts will be far worse for the plants that accidental overdosing.

This is my "dosing cabinet".

 

[jsiegmund]

Ok thanks. I'm not dosing strict EI, instead trying to find the balance between supply and demand. A bit trickier, but I like the challenge. I know about the reaction but in smaller doses, morning vs. evening should also mean that the plants had enough time to uptake the ferts I think? I mean, even when you do alternate days, there will still be some micro's left when you dose the macro's, especially with EI. So for now I went with micro's @ noon before my lights go on and macro's @ 8 PM after the lights have gone off. To be honest, that was just being lazy because I couldn't figure out how to program the pumps to do alternate days 😛