Has anyone actually observed a legitimate iron deficiency that was remedied by changing the chelator but keeping the overall level of Fe dosing the same?
I think
@Hufsa in her journal described such a situation.
Ah no, I tried different chelators but it didnt make a difference for me, because it was actually a Manganese deficiency.
I think
@KirstyF might have had success with switching iron chelators though.
But
@Andy Pierce makes a good point, there is a lot of "supposing" going around and not quite as much "knowing" when it comes to iron chelators.
I personally havent seen a lot of super clear evidence of different chelate effectiveness while dosing the same amount, aside from maybe Kirsty's experiments.
I suspect it might be a little over-emphasised in some circumstances.
Some people even seem to make completely unchelated trace mixes on purpose (well obviously on purpose but), because even though it is more easily lost to precipitation, it is said that the plants also uptake it more easily. Usually these would be recommended to be daily dosed.
Im guessing the softer the water, the less phosphate in the water column, and the more frequent the dosing, the more viable unchelated or weakly chelated become to use.
Yes PO4 will react with Fe and precipitate out as plant inaccessible iron phosphate. This is why when using EI dosing, the macro and micro are dosed alternate days to keep the PO4 away from the Fe.
I dont really buy the alternate days dosing, especially in EI cases. With EI dosing there will be significant amounts of phosphate in the water at all times, not just on days they are dosed.
So sure it might be a little bit more phosphate in the water on "macro" days, but still a whole lot of it will be left when "micro" day comes around.
So in my opinion they are not really kept away from each other. I think even Tom Barr has admitted that the alternate day thing was more of a "make things as foolproof as possible" deal than actually something that is necessary. For me I want to keep the concentrated(undiluted) solutions of macro and micro away from each other, but as soon as they have been distributed in the water column its pretty much fair game.
It can be quite hard to induce Fe deficiency in aquatic plants
Its really not hard at all
?
but many people have managed to achieve it on this forum in their various non EI dosing methods
Unsubstantiated statement in my opinion. This forum has quite a lot of threads from EI users who have pale plant tops and most of the threads seem to resolve themselves once the focus on iron is brought up.
Iron deficiency is not a "non EI" thing 😅 Iron deficiency is a "trying to keep iron plant available in water thing". No need for the "us vs them" stirring of the pot, especially on such thin grounds 😉
