green dust algae :(

[plantbrain]

ceg4048,

I still have a serious issue with the Ca balance PO4 baloney.

This is not about EI vs this method or any method, this is about the basics of plant growth.
This is not "new", the principles applied to terrestrial and aquatics have not changed.
Nor have test or protocols to assess growth.

Liebig's law seems lost and the interaction between limiting a nutrient and that affect on CO2.
I KNOW folks have troubles measuring and ensuring CO2 is correct.

So it's hard at best to say much without knowing the CO2 status.
You can fiddle with nutrients all day and find some correlation, but it does not prove what you claim.
It just says there is some relationship, correlation does not imply cause.

If we mess with PO4 and Ca, which I have over enormous ranges, far more than I have even seem anyone else do on line after 15 years, why does the algae not appear?

Same type of thing with folks that claim low PO4 = no algae, algae are limited etc, and yet the other side is to test your hypothesis by trying to FALSIFY IT.

Chrubilar, you have not tried to falsify this near as I can tell anywhere.
If you have, please detail what you did to try and induce a negative response?

I want some hard ppm numbers for this range and some pictures of the tanks tested.
Not anything else.

I have gone from 4ppm Ca and 6ppm PO4, to 140ppm Ca and -0.4ppm of PO4, a ratio difference of PO4 to Ca 1:1.5 to 1:350, over 500x the range of PO4 to Ca.

I think that covers most common Ca levels in aquariums.
PO4 we can move around, but as it becomes limiting(or Ca), the effects on CO2 become more problematic and dependent.

Do you have a protocol to ensure and verify CO2 is non limiting in both situations?
I've not read anything that suggest you do or measured light.

These are strongly dependent factors.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[CeeJay]

Hi Tom
That's what I love about this place, people like yourself who have gathered evidence over many years and are willing to take the time to share it with people like myself, who are fairly new to the planted tank hobby.
It's certainly helping me out no end, by not making mistakes that were made by many in years gone by.
Thanks for your input.
Much appreciated.


Chris.

 

[ceg4048]

ceg4048,

I still have a serious issue with the Ca balance PO4 baloney.

This is not about EI vs this method or any method, this is about the basics of plant growth.
This is not "new", the principles applied to terrestrial and aquatics have not changed.
Nor have test or protocols to assess growth.

Liebig's law seems lost and the interaction between limiting a nutrient and that affect on CO2.
I KNOW folks have troubles measuring and ensuring CO2 is correct.

So it's hard at best to say much without knowing the CO2 status.
You can fiddle with nutrients all day and find some correlation, but it does not prove what you claim.
It just says there is some relationship, correlation does not imply cause.

If we mess with PO4 and Ca, which I have over enormous ranges, far more than I have even seem anyone else do on line after 15 years, why does the algae not appear?

Same type of thing with folks that claim low PO4 = no algae, algae are limited etc, and yet the other side is to test your hypothesis by trying to FALSIFY IT.

Exactly. I too have gone from low Ca to high Ca relative to PO4 and have never had a problem as long as CO2 and the rest of the nutrients were unlimited (to the best of my ability to keep it so). I agree that it's not about EI versus some other method, but about basic physiology versus speculative analysis. As you point out, most of us have trouble controlling the myriad of environmental variables enough to isolate specific causal factors with any degree of consistency. And I won't even go into the issue of the measurement technology because this is a can of worms.

I won't argue with methods which are opposed to or are inconsistent with EI, but I will argue with the reasons of those methods when they clearly violate the standard physiological principles of plant growth.

There is not Ca vsus Po4, I suggest an imbalance related to Ca plus Po4, too much of both relating to No3 and Mg.... If my assert is absurd for you, I think that you need more than a claim of one sentence to explain why. I intrigued.

Here is the reason why it's absurd: As I mentioned before (when I use the word versus I am implying ratio, or "balance" as you call it, so that PO4 vs Ca implies the ratio of PO4 to Ca) I have already demonstrated that that I can have as much Ca or PO4 as I want in relation to NO3 without any adverse effect. So this isn't a matter of a one sentence claim - it's a matter of the empirical evidence growing plants. So as Barr says, you need to explain why an algae free tank can be grown even when exceeding the limits of your protocol. I can hold the dosing of all other nutrients constant and vary the PO4. By doing so, the only way in which algae appears in the tank is if I fall below some minimum value. And guess what? The algae that does appear won't be GDA.

Poor CO2 is a fundamentally cause of GDA.

Interesting claim. Primitive but interesting. If you read the MDC, you will find that proper amount of Co2 is identify as a pre rrequisite. Proper amount of Co2 for me is just a little bit before shrimp became to be disturb.

Here's the most primitive of assertions: Ascribing the minimum level of CO2 for a plant based on the CO2 toxicity level of an animal. I mean, do you really think that the plant cares about the fish/shrimp? Have you ever considered that for some lighting conditions, the level of CO2 required for undisturbed plant growth might be higher than what certain fauna can tolerate? So, unilaterally defining "proper" levels of CO2 based on shrimp is further evidence of Druid philosophy.

Lets see, everybody can read the thread at APC and take they own idea. At Dr.pez we were using this method for several years with positive feedback. The positive feedback at APC show that there is no the "disastre" you claim.

Many people claim to have great success not dosing nutrients for example. If you understand the fundamental biology of plants you'll know that zero nutrients cannot possibly work, just as zero breakfasts, lunches, or dinners can't possibly help your tissues to grow. So the answer seems clear; we know that test kits are inaccurate and we know that tap water is frequently full of nutrients. Have you considered that when someone reports measuring 3ppm NO3 that they may actually have 20ppm and not know it? Is it possible that the sediment might have nutrients as well? Plant growth and health must come from somewhere and it does not come from starvation. Lowering the light has immediate effects in nutrient demand and uptake, water changes always helps by removing organic waste and algal spores. So it would be very easy to have the illusion that limiting nutrients somehow did the trick. What you have yet to explain is why the reverse procedure i.e. unlimiting nutrients while violating your balancing concept has no detrimental effects.


Cheers,

 

[plantbrain]

In other words, look at both sides of the coin, test your own hypothesis and see if it holds true with a reference planted aquarium.

If you are willing to do that, then you really cannot test much of anything and verify it.
All you can say is that there appears to be a relationship, without saying why in your conclusion.
It could be for a dozen reasons, without going back to induce the algae, you have no way of knowing cause(s).

You can go on and on, but without being willing to induce the algae of interest, there's little that can be said.
Many methods like to tell aquarist what they want to hear, but that does not imply they are correct in their conclusions and rational.

Most often some cure all for algae.
I can say the same thing about EI "curing algae" and state for the record it cured many aquariums for decades now.

However, it never cured algae.
I've been smart enough to never say that.

It focused on plant growth only.
And because it is a higher level for all nutrients, it runs into conflict when folks limit one thing and have dependency on other factors.

The test is NOT independent.
Without independence, you cannot conclude much as to causes or why, only that there seems to be a relationship.
From a management perspective, it might work, PMDD worked fine also, but for the wrong reasons.
Plenty of folks used that method, some still do and are happy as well.

It was better than the prior method.

EI is much more a simple reference, much like Hoagland's solution is for hydroponic studies looking at a non limiting reference. It's about 1/5th in strength, which is what Gerloff and Paul K stated here:

http://www.new.aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_11/issue_4/0529.pdf

As far algae, not one aquarist I've met or read seems to know much about anything to do with nutrient limitation methods and chemostats, nor what life history phase is appropriate for testing contro methods, let alone how to identify various species.

I've not met many willing to trash and induce algae into a reference planted tanks either.
I am. So we have a bunch of folks just trying to maintain their tanks, but unwilling to do any real testing and use methods that are used in research to answer the basic questions.

This leads to huge knowledge gaps between researchers and hobbyists.

I cannot answer why or the cause of inducement for algae with one simple test, it takes many test for each specific potential "cause". Each time I falsify one hypothesis, I get a little bit closer to the real cause or causes.

I've been doing that for 15 years.
Many folks also have tried various ppm's of this and that.
Not hard to tell if there is something to it or not, often, as is the case for most things, you bark up the wrong tree, but then at least know what not to look for.

So that is good information. Most of the contention with EI and other methods tends to come from my falsifying their claims.

They do not like that and poo poo me for that.


Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[GreenNeedle]

Just to add. I have not had GDA on the glass since my early days of unstable CO2. This is with EI but higher PO4 dosing. I have no control over Ca as being in Lincolnshire my water is liquid Ca. Each week I have to quite literally use a window scraper to remove a pretty hard 'chalklike' line from the perimeter of the tank.

So my tank has excess everything with even more PO4 and more Ca than is needed.

I have tiny amounts of GSA on some Anubias but nowhere else. There are no other species of algae visible in the tank as Saintly can vouch for 🙂

I will se what happens now that I have converted to non CO2. The tank will now be getting no water changes and therefore no added Ca apart from top ups. Hopefully that no water changes means hardly any Ca being added the chalk lines will reduce because I scrape them into the tank water and therefore I assume the Ca will eventually get used up.

Dosing is now:
10% EI KNO3
20% EI KH2PO4
5% EI traces.

AC

 

[ch_rubilar]

I apologize but I will have some free time for answering on monday. Regads