tubamanandy
Member
Would I be correct in thinking that if you were running EI dosing and you were doing 2-weekly (50%) water changes you would run into algae problems due to nutrient overload ?
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E I Dosing question
- Thread starter tubamanandy
- Start date
Algae is not caused by "nutrient overload", though you may get algae due to all the waste products from fish and plants left in the water due to missing a water change.
In practice I have run for over 3 weeks with full IE dosing and apart from plants needing "smartening up" didn't suffer algae problems.
In practice I have run for over 3 weeks with full IE dosing and apart from plants needing "smartening up" didn't suffer algae problems.
plantbrain
Member
- Joined
- 2 Aug 2007
- Messages
- 1,938
You can run this modeling graphing calculator and see what the ranges will be:
Concentrations of Stuff vs Time and Plant Uptake using The Estimative Index
At standard EI:
add 15 ppm 2x a week
50% water change weekly
Now plug in water changes once a month, you'll start to see negative numbers and some rather higher peaks.
This is a pretty wide range. So..........2x a month will be somewhere between, but this will give you an idea.
Now try doing 2x a week 50% water changes and see how little the ppm's change.
More work= ensures more stability.
Larger % water changes also do the same thing.
Then you know you are +/- only a few ppm at most.
So no test kit is required at all.
Many use fish/plants/algae as test kits anyway as they get more experience anyhow.
Note, this also works well for reefs and then you do not have to mess with so much stuff in the autodose/skimmers, sumps/PO4 removers etc.
But you have to pay for salt mix.
So.........always some trade off.
Concentrations of Stuff vs Time and Plant Uptake using The Estimative Index
At standard EI:
add 15 ppm 2x a week
50% water change weekly
Now plug in water changes once a month, you'll start to see negative numbers and some rather higher peaks.
This is a pretty wide range. So..........2x a month will be somewhere between, but this will give you an idea.
Now try doing 2x a week 50% water changes and see how little the ppm's change.
More work= ensures more stability.
Larger % water changes also do the same thing.
Then you know you are +/- only a few ppm at most.
So no test kit is required at all.
Many use fish/plants/algae as test kits anyway as they get more experience anyhow.
Note, this also works well for reefs and then you do not have to mess with so much stuff in the autodose/skimmers, sumps/PO4 removers etc.
But you have to pay for salt mix.
So.........always some trade off.
