Aeropars said:
Looking at the instructions on the tropica website it appears that you only dose once per week and that this is sufficient. I jknow George is using it amongst others and haveing great sucess with it but i'm curious. Are they feeding only the stated amount or a modified amount?
I'm concidering giving it a go at some point and i'm wonding what's so special about it that people are raving about it as much as the ADA stuff when that was released.
People rave about a lot of things without have any real science to back up the raving. What do you think is the difference between any of the commercial products, or between any commercial product and the dry powders? Concentration and price - that's it. NPK is NPK. The commercial products are made from the dry powder and are mostly water. As discussed in a couple of other threads many brands use either urea or ammonium salts in various relative amounts for their N source.
Some brands have a low concentration so that if you dose per the bottle instructions such as once per week, under high lighting conditions your plants will suffer deficiency because they will use up the NPK rapidly. It's that simple. Some other brand may have higher concentrations but normally, in a high tech tank they will fail if dosed per bottle instructions. In a low tech tank the bottle dosing instructions can be followed with much less risk. Why? Uptake rates in a low tech tank are much lower and the bottled product serves to supplement fish waste.
These branded nutrients therefore are mostly water and you are paying for water. Is it any wonder you have to dose TPN+ at a much more frequent interval? This is so that you are providing a sufficient amount of NPK to at least satisfy the daily uptake rates of the tank. Guess what? That's the principle of EI. Essentially dosing daily TPN+ is EI using a commercial brand. If you don't mind paying a premium for water then TPN+ (or any brand) is great in that you don't have to faff about with mixing powders. You are paying for convenience
only.
If you then try to make the leap and argue that somehow the "quality" of TPN+ is higher than that of dry powders, or that somehow plant growth is better and prettier, or, that you get less algae, then this would be seriously delusional. Neith plants nor algae care about the brand of NPK. Rating any of these products is also useless if you don't know what is in them. If you know the contents of, say, a Ferropol bottle, you can easily adjust the dosing amounts to compensate for whatever concentration the bottle contains. This will give you the same growth rates as any other product. I guess you could then "rate" Ferropol as lower due to lower concentration but that's about it. You can't rate the quality of it's NPK.
It's necessary therefore to define what your priorities and values are if you are going to prescribe a "rating". To assess someone else's rating you have to understand what that persons values are and compare those values to your own. Don't forget also that "rating" also has a component of skill. A skilled plant grower will have a different rating system than an inexperienced one.
If you dose a branded product do you really think that this will be the only determining factor in the look, growth or health of your plants and of the tanks ecology? What about maintenance practices, CO2, Filtration, lighting? If these other elements are sub-par do you think that TPN+ can erase the effects of that?
My advice is to stick with your powders and learn how to grow plants successfully. Then, after your skills have increased to the point where you can grow them effortlessly, then, objectively assess whether another product complies more closely with your values. I guarantee you that you can cultivate a world class planted tank using nothing but the humble powders, regardless of ratings or ravings.
Cheers,
