Lean dosing pros and cons

[medlight]

N 3ppm from UREA only.

I think basing the N with only urea could lead to problems
I quote this link where @Happy quotes this problem
"Adding an excessive amount of urea can result in BBA and Cyano at the top of the plant appearing to have a dark color and the same odor as Cyano."

 

[MichaelJ]

Laziness. I hated having to take a few minutes to make new ferts instead of 2 mouseclicks and wait a day. Its insane I know. That is the sort of society we are becoming. I'm paying a lot extra to not have that minor hassle, yet I pay it with a smile knowing I wont have to make new ferts at a moment that I dont really have time for it (which to be fair is always since I hate doing it).

I hear you... When I started out doing my own macros an remineralization I thought it would be daunting. However, measuring out the 4-5 salts I'm using and dumping them into the tanks after my weekly WC has become 2nd nature - takes me a fraction of the overall time I spend on the weekly maintenance. I would feel differently about traces though - I cant imagine myself mixing my own traces from the 7-8 odd raw materials that typically goes into traces... So for traces I am just mixing a 500 ml water solution using Nilog Plantex CMS+B. It will typically last 5-6 weeks.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[plantnoobdude]

I think basing the N with only urea could lead to problems
I quote this link where @Happy quotes this problem
"Adding an excessive amount of urea can result in BBA and Cyano at the top of the plant appearing to have a dark color and the same odor as Cyano."

hi, @Happi. thoughts? also 3ppm N per week is a good start right?

 

[Happi]

hi, @Happi. thoughts? also 3ppm N per week is a good start right?

Based on my observations the 3 ppm N urea will only cause that issue and the cyano on the tip is if you were dosing it excessively along with high po4. 3 ppm N split into small doses such as 0.2-0.5 N daily is no issue at all. I don't see the point dosing 3 ppm N from urea in a single dose.

 

[plantnoobdude]

Based on my observations the 3 ppm N urea will only cause that issue and the cyano on the tip is if you were dosing it excessively along with high po4. 3 ppm N split into small doses such as 0.2-0.5 N daily is no issue at all. I don't see the point dosing 3 ppm N from urea in a single dose.

perfect, i struggle with cyano on tips of cuphea and other stems so i don't want to make it worse.

 

[plantnoobdude]

Hi, @Happi, just a few (hopefully) final questions before i jump right into my new dosing scheme
I have some ADA amazonia type 1. it will have been soaking for about 1 month by the time I use it. should I dose starting straight away? or wait a while untill deficiencies pop up and start fertilising again.

My ultimate goal is to grow pantanal ,ammania gold, cuphea, wallichii well at the same time along with various eriocaulaceae+ buces.
do these numbers work well with such species?
N 3ppm from UREA only.
K 2ppm from k2s04
P 0.36ppm from kh2po4
Fe 0.1 Fedtpa
B 0.014 h3bo3
Mn 0.067 mn edta
Zn 0.014 zn edta
Cu 0.014 cu edta
Mo 0.003 (NH4)6Mo7O24
NI 0.0001
cheers,

 

[Happi]

Hi, @Happi, just a few (hopefully) final questions before i jump right into my new dosing scheme
I have some ADA amazonia type 1. it will have been soaking for about 1 month by the time I use it. should I dose starting straight away? or wait a while untill deficiencies pop up and start fertilising again.

My ultimate goal is to grow pantanal ,ammania gold, cuphea, wallichii well at the same time along with various eriocaulaceae+ buces.
do these numbers work well with such species?
N 3ppm from UREA only.
K 2ppm from k2s04
P 0.36ppm from kh2po4
Fe 0.1 Fedtpa
B 0.014 h3bo3
Mn 0.067 mn edta
Zn 0.014 zn edta
Cu 0.014 cu edta
Mo 0.003 (NH4)6Mo7O24
NI 0.0001
cheers,

I would recommend starting with Micro and K only if the soil is almost new, I don't see the point of adding Urea and P at early stage when there is plenty of N will be present in the water. you can slowly start adding Urea and P once the tank is fully established

Fe 0.1 Fedtpa
B 0.014 h3bo3
Mn 0.067 mn edta
Zn 0.014 zn edta
Cu 0.014 cu edta
Mo 0.003 (NH4)6Mo7O24

 

[erwin123]

My ultimate goal is to grow pantanal ,ammania gold, cuphea, wallichii well at the same time along with various eriocaulaceae+ buces.
do these numbers work well with such species?

Coincidentally thats my goal too... but (EI-loving) Pantanal and (doesn't like EI) Ammannia Gold in the same tank is going to be a challenge - if you scroll back earlier and see Happi's very lean recipe for Ammannia, you wonder how Pantanal is going to be able to display its full form with that kind of dose

I am still experimenting and hoping that a middle ground is possible.

 

[Happi]

Coincidentally thats my goal too... but (EI-loving) Pantanal and (doesn't like EI) Ammannia Gold in the same tank is going to be a challenge - if you scroll back earlier and see Happi's very lean recipe for Ammannia, you wonder how Pantanal is going to be able to display its full form with that kind of dose

I am still experimenting and hoping that a middle ground is possible.

I had no problem growing Pantanal, Ammannia, Wallachi under lean approach. Pantanal is actually very easy to grow compare to the other two.

 

[erwin123]

I had no problem growing Pantanal, Ammannia, Wallachi under lean approach. Pantanal is actually very easy to grow compare to the other two.

thats great to hear... does Pantanal under lean dosing take on a smaller form compared to Pantanal under EI (eg: Tom Barr's tanks) where their leaves seem to grow pretty big?

 

[Happi]

thats great to hear... does Pantanal under lean dosing take on a smaller form compared to Pantanal under EI (eg: Tom Barr's tanks) where their leaves seem to grow pretty big?

bigger leaves have nothing to do with Higher dosing or lean dosing, it has more to do with proper dosing. plant dosed with Urea will always obtain much bigger leaves if you are going after bigger leaves, some plant under Urea form Oval shaped leaves which some people might not like. I will try to find some pictures for you in my free time.

 

[JoshP12]

Hi all,

Chasing magic water column targets to appease all plants when using non-inert substrate is futile.

An “n’th” of a ppm isn’t going to matter since your substrate will top it up - epiphytes without root exempted.

There is no such thing as proper water column dosing - the plant doesn’t actually care. If you are aiming for plant mastery (a concept I have only heard @Geoffrey Rea talk about), then you need to adopt this thinking.

Plants grow bigger when there is more of everything. Something drives growth and if the rest is there, it will top itself up to the limiting nutrient - this is @dw1305 with leidbig and the assembly line —- it is not obvious and you can’t recite the words to understand this law. You need to sit and painstakingly think about it over and over — if you don’t, people will seem like special cases and they are not.

Urea is the special nitrogen. It gives co2 and nitrogen localized in the plant. I reckon if you dosed glut instead of urea with active substrate, plants grow bigger too … co2 from glut - localized - drives growth, roots top up the stuff from substrate … game over.

Turn to emersed growth - why are they so big? You can leave the column lean lean lean yet they are massive. Why?

***if you increase your protein intake, you get bigger and your metabolism increases … (yes thermic effect of digestion but ignore this), why? more N and P in amino acids! It’s the same. We have the gases unlimited. But the acquisition of those gases will affect respiration … we can turn to treatments to increase hemoglobin in blood so we get more oxygen in each breath.

Here’s a riddle - what is the limiting factor in leidbigs laws … it exists and it extends into system thinking (you need to get out of the nutrient tunnel vision, think big picture, think acquisition).


You need magic targets with inert substrate or it won’t work. That comes with experiment and choosing compatible plants.

 

[erwin123]

Hi all,

Chasing magic water column targets to appease all plants when using non-inert substrate is futile.

I would keep an open mind. Happi has given a recommendation/recipe, plantnoobdude is going to follow it, I'm keen to see the 'real-life' results whatever the "theory" is.

 

[JoshP12]

I would keep an open mind. Happi has given a recommendation/recipe, plantnoobdude is going to follow it, I'm keen to see the 'real-life' results whatever the "theory" is.

My mind is always open 🙂.

I’m a huge advocate for trying things to obtain results and learning: you won’t understand anything unless you actually see it.

I’ve run all of this personally - the issue is we will confirm our bias unless we monitor longitudinally … you need the substrate to wear out.

There are targets that you should aim for to extend the life of your substrate and assist plant growth - they are the known: low KH, GH5, low N, low P, .1 Fe over the week as proxy for micro (I’ve already said how to circumvent the csm issue), K at golden ratio to Mg and Ca with daily addition of K based on uptake/observation. K and Micro daily.

Dosing is dynamic. It changes with the life of the tank. You don’t dose the same on day 1 that you dose on day 100.

The reason I was so blunt is because if we don’t follow it fully - like hundreds of threads - we fall into dogma.

Perhaps I’m dogmatic!

Side note: I’m keen for results too — I have predictions on what will happen.

 

[plantnoobdude]

Side note: I’m keen for results too — I have predictions on what will happen.

care to share? interested to hear your predictions

 

[Happi]

@plantnoobdude

let me predict few things which I already covered in one of my post. lets assume you made the recipe and added all the chemicals and recipe didn't work you. does that mean you made an error somewhere? very well could have been. are you going to give up immediately and go back to whatever works best for you or do you have enough patience to keep on trying? because I can already predict that you will face some challenges and it will come down to you weather you accept those challenges or give up. once you overcome those challenges, you will gain much more knowledge and become more successful.

now that you have a access to Make or Modify the recipes, you can even dose them the way you want, for example: if you ever felt like that you really want to add more K to your recipe, you can easily modify that, same goes for N or P. we can also say the same for Micro/Fe as well, now its in your control and you can dose whichever nutrients you want to dose at given ppm, something you cannot do with premixed fertilizer.

the goal here is not to give you the exact recipe that might have worked for me, the goal here is to get you started somewhere with these recipe which can later be Modified as needed. and this apply to everyone who is following these recipes.

lets assume you are worried about some of the nutrients becoming too low, especially K. you can always go for something like this which is still lean far as N goes but it will cover more K and Micro/Fe similar to how Marian runs his tanks. along with adding GH booster between 4-5 DGH

Weekly doses:

KNO3:
NO3 7
N 1.58
K 4.41

KH2PO4:
PO4 0.96000
P 0.31308
K 0.39520

Traces from any of the clones:
0.2-0.4 Fe

as you can see that this will add more K/Fe/Trace while keeping the N and P at lower levels, this is different approach and this too will work much better compared to if you were dosing everything High.

 

[plantnoobdude]

the goal here is not to give you the exact recipe that might have worked for me, the goal here is to get you started somewhere with these recipe which can later be Modified as needed. and this apply to everyone who is following these recipes.

obviously, these recipe are not magic numbers that are going to work instantly, and im willing to accept that. but i would like to stick to having K lower than N and keeping micros low. after all that is what i had best success with in the past.

 

[JoshP12]

care to share? interested to hear your predictions

Will have to see if all details for the tank are available for thread.

If I get some time to mine it, will post here any further questions. Any concrete predictions would need all details - as if I looked at your tank - current ones are loose.

 

[jaypeecee]

"Adding an excessive amount of urea can result in BBA and Cyano at the top of the plant appearing to have a dark color and the same odor as Cyano."

Hi @medlight

When I experimented with Urea some time back, it also had the effect of promoting the growth of Cyanobacteria. I can't remember off-hand the dosage I used but I will have recorded it.

JPC

 

[John q]

the goal here is not to give you the exact recipe that might have worked for me, the goal here is to get you started somewhere

Just like to chip in on this.

I was rather sceptical about lean dosing at the beginning of this thread but thought - "Don't criticise it if you haven't tried it." With that in mind I've tried to alter my dosing regime on two occasions recently, the last attempt was a fairly radical change working off one of Happi's recipes, on both occasions I pulled the plug after two weeks ~ they didn't work.

I don't hold anything against happi, infact he stated from the outset it might not work and might need tweaking, if anything I'm actually quite grateful to him. Throughout these "experiments" I've witnessed with my own eyes changes to the plants that I'd otherwise never have seen, or if I did see them probably wouldn't have known what the issue was.

Seeing a real life magnesium deficiency and then reverting it is a sight to behold. Lol.

So despite my last two attempts failing I'm going to continue in this vain, continue tweaking the recipe and see what else can be learnt.

Cheers.