ei dosing help

[dmallia]

I just built my first planted tank a few months ago and currently is being dosed with premixed fertilizers and pressurized co2. Plants are rotala rotundifolia, spiky moss and will soon be adding rotala macranda and ludiwiga repens rubin. Since plants are doing good, and I am going to run out of ferts soon, I thought of switching to dry salts, so I used the rotalabutterfly.com calculator and calculated a solution for the macro and micro bottles.

Macro:

Micro:


Since my tank is stocked with some guppies, shrimps and snail my nitrates are always over 20ppm without dosing and with the currently dosing it is almost 40-80ppm. Since with the dosing, it is a little high, I was thinking of not dosing KNO3 and increase K2SO4. So I did another calculation and the results are below.



Since I am new to ei, do you think I should dose nitrate? If no should I use dosages of the 1st macro picture or use the second. And are the dosages calculated good? Thanks.

 

[ian_m]

Do not alter your EI dose based on false assumptions from test kits...that is starting down the path of algae and malnourished plants. Seen it so many times here.

EI was invented so that you don't have to use test kits. You dose EI therefore you know the amounts of ferts as you measured them, this is more than enough for any plants, so therefore no need to test for ferts levels. 50% water change resets any remaining ferts levels (and more importantly removes waste organics). Job done.

Test kits, especially NO3 and PO4 are notoriously affected by other ions present in tank water and will give completely wrong readings leading you down the path of malnourished plants....

Dose as per here.
http://www.aquariumplantfood.co.uk/fertilisers/dry-chemicals/starter-kits/ei-starter-kit.html

No need to weigh anything, tea spoon measurements is fine. Being exact doesn't matter, you will be dosing more than enough for plants.

As for fish being affected, doubt it..

My dosing pump got left permanently on (thanks cheap timer plug ) and I ended up with 350ppm NO3 and 80ppm PO4 for about a week before I realised. Fish unaffected, that's why I didn't notice. No extra growth from plants either. Oh well. just continued water changes and all fine apart from wasted EI ferts solution.

If you feel you must test your water then something like this is less prone to ionic interference.
https://uk.hach.com/test-kit-nitrate-nitrite-model-ni-12/family-product?id=26427776183&callback=pf