Clive, I didn't understand this quote, so you are saying that you don't use any fertilizer such as CSM+B ? Which is made with EDTA chelate? I thought you have a sticky thread about this on the front page in the fertilizer dosing section. Again the argument is not even about or related to weather spending the money on chelate or not or weather spending the money on these are throwing the money in the drain. Am just curious now what you use now that is not made with chelation? Please answer so others can benefit from it.
What I'm saying is that I do not care what chelator is in my nutrient products. Hobbyists do not need to fret as much as they do about which chelator to use. As soon as you put the nutrient products in the water the plants start to absorb them. There are both passive and active methods used by the plant leaves to absorb nutrients. Within an hour the plants have taken up as much Iron and other micronutrients that they need. It doesn't really matter if much of it precipitate out of solution because they have taken their fill and even so, the micronutrient precipitates settle into the sediment where the plant roots have other chemical mechanisms to absorb these micronutrients if needed.
What I'm saying therefore is that EI is first and foremost a method of defeating the commercial brands that charge an arm and a leg for basic nutrients that farmers have been using to grow produce for a hundred years. We can buy the very cheapest raw powders and the micronutrient powders can use the most basic and cheapest chelators and this will be completely transparent to the plants. You do not need to spend extra money for exotic chelators because the plants really do not care. I buy my nutrient products from the cheapest and most reliable e-bay sellers. That failing that I can go to the nearest nursery and buy the stuff in bulk.
I find several flaws when I see a advice like this, another good example is "increase the PO4 to combat GSA" this advice is quite common for Many EI users. The question is where does the GSA goes when tropica fertilizer is used? Which have a very low PO4 and much lower P to N ratio compared to EI. We can apply the same logic to "Increase nitrate to combat Cyano bacteria" then where is the cyano for those who has been running aquarium for decade with almost 0 nitrate.
Well, again, the reason you see it as a flaw is due to lack of understanding of the nutrient mechanism. Yes, if GSA is due to a PO4 deficiency (it can also be due to CO2 deficiency and any combination thereof) then you need to add more PO4. There is no calculation of exactly how much PO4 is needed for the plant to recover. It would be a tall task to determine the mass required in every circumstance. In any case, Tropica fertilizer and ANY commercial brand of NPK fertilizer are mostly water, but
may contain sufficient levels of PO4 to allow the plant to recover. It may simply take a longer time than the hobbyists has patience for. I don't understand your confusion about this. If you add EI levels of PO4, which deliver at least an order of magnitude more PO4 than any commercial brand, then the plants will recover much more quickly. Because the commercial brands are so weak, they do not deliver sufficient NH4 to cause a loading rate that triggers algae. In this way the fact that the product is weak is a safety net for the user, but the penalty is that you are paying for a product that is mostly water. I specifically point this out in the EI Tutorial.
Furthermore, "add bushy nose to combat GDA" these are not solutions to the problems, you don't see Tropica hiring a crew of bushy nose to combat these kind of problems.
I have never said this. In fact I always am at odds with this advice, generally, because I do not believe fish should be used to solve algae problem. Now Barr may advocate the addition of fish - but perhaps you have taken the statement out of context. He does not state to
only add fish, but to add them in addition to performing those actions that mitigate the proliferation of that algae.
So for example BBA is a CO2 related algae, but even if you fix the CO2 BBA won't just simply go away. It has to be removed by either chemical (Excel) or mechanical means. It would be nice if there was a fish that ate BBA, because then you would be able to do the things necessary to improve the CO2 and the fish would do the dirty work of removing the tufts. So this is the scenario with GSA that Barr is probably referring to. GSA and Diatoms are still very difficult species to deal with. Diatoms, depending on the tank conditions may erupt and then go away with a few weeks of tank startup. There are no nutrients you can add to combat this. Similarly, GDA is usually cause by too much light and poor CO2 but is a cyclic algae and there is no nutrient you can add to diminish it, however, you do need to continue good husbandry, reduce the lighting, ensure good CO2 and if bushy noses will tackle the existing blooms then that's a brilliant solution because the GDA will go away only when it has completed it's life cycle.
Back to the argument regarding fertilizer, nutrients and algae. I can induce, reduce, increase or get rid of any kind of algae in a controlled setting with the right dose, amount and the chemical fertilizer. If I made a statement like "fertilizer doesn't cause algae" "nutrients doesn't cause algae" then I would be lying to my self and others. But my advice would be focus on increasing the plant mass and dose the tank as neededed, I don't see the logic behind dosing EI trying to grow some Java moss.
Well talk is cheap and it's a very easy to make the statement that you can induce algae by using fertilizer - and you may have convinced yourself that this is true. But we do not know the details of your experimentation. You could easily have done something or not done something that had an effect without your realizing it. We do not know if the exercise was done scientifically. We do not know if there were any controls.
The mechanism of algae is very complicated and it's very easy to draw conclusions on mere coincidence. I do know that under certain conditions you can see algae by adding certain amounts of KNO3. How does this happen? It happens when the CO2 is marginal, i.e. the tank is already CO2 limited.
Here is the key: When you add CO2 you automatically increase the demand for NO3. When you add NO3 you automatically increase the demand for
both CO2 and PO4.
So, if the tank is CO2 limited and you add a lot of NO3 you increased the demand for CO2 which is not satisfied. Due to the now poor CO2 uptake the result is a CO2 related algae, which could be any filamentous algae or red algae. If the tank were PO4 limited but there was sufficient CO2 then adding lots of NO3 will then cause a PO4 restriction and the plants suffer PO4 related algae such as GSA.
Now we arrive at the root of your semantics argument: Does adding NO3
cause algae, or is it that adding NO3
exposes a CO2 or PO4 weakness?
As I mentioned no one has any idea what the conditions of your tanks was when you performed these miracles of nutrient "causing" algae.
I do know, however, that I can cure an algae problem by adding nutrients - and that we have instructed many people over the years to add nutrients and then when the followed the instructions their algae woes were were cured. I mean just go to the Algae section of the forum and review those threads you will see time after time that many people come to this forum believing that "nutrients cause algae" and when they reverse their thinking and start to add nutrients the problems are solved.
Here are the results an experiment where I deliberately restricted PO4. Then after a while, added PO4. Can you see the difference?
I can do this repeatedly and get the same results. As long as CO2 and other nutrients remain unlimited the tank does not fall into the trap of bi-directional interactions and suffer the consequences of Liebig's Law of The Minimum.
Furthermore, yes, I do have an EI Tutorial posted and for your information that tank in the photos were dosed with between 3X-5X EI concentration level, merely to convince myself that nutrients don't cause algae. So if you are getting algae by adding nutrients - and lets be clear, I don't count NH3/NH4 or Urea even though they contain N and even though they are almost 5 times more effective at delivering N to the plant than NO3 is, then you are doing something wrong and you need to investigate where you are going wrong. There are many ways to screw up a tank and EI does not solve every possible screw-up. The dosing program is part of an overall strategy of plant health that involves more than what powder you are using or what chemical you are calling a nutrient.
Cheers,
