First since I have only one tank and it's 90g what works for me may not work for others. Also I make no claims for perfection.
I use EI with dry powder. Going by the EI charts I use 1.5 tsp of KNO3, 0.5tsp of Monopotassium phosphate and 0.25tsp of CSM+B three times a week with a weekly 50% water change. I occasionally add some Iron powder with the traces if I think it might help the colors.
The powder of any of these never hits the bottom of the tank before being fully dissolved. My tank is about 20" from surface to substrate usually.
Nothing fancy. My substrate being MTS no doubt contributes to the healthy plant growth.
When I don't have a empty CO2 tank ( ) I try to keep my drop checker in the lime zone.
Tank looks like a seltzer bottle with the two lights now.
First since I have only one tank and it's 90g what works for me may not work for others. Also I make no claims for perfection.
I use EI with dry powder. Going by the EI charts I use 1.5 tsp of KNO3, 0.5tsp of Monopotassium phosphate and 0.25tsp of CSM+B three times a week with a weekly 50% water change. I occasionally add some Iron powder with the traces if I think it might help the colors.
The powder of any of these never hits the bottom of the tank before being fully dissolved. My tank is about 20" from surface to substrate usually.
Nothing fancy. My substrate being MTS no doubt contributes to the healthy plant growth.
When I don't have a empty CO2 tank ( ) I try to keep my drop checker in the lime zone.
Tank looks like a seltzer bottle with the two lights now.
jim
Thanks for the info. From where do you acquire your fertz?
Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
Not to be contentious because Jim's method can and does work, but if you want something similar to what you were using I would go with the Seachem line. The Pfertz line used a combination of nitrogen sources. Plants can consume urea, nitrate, or ammonium sources of nitrogen and each species of plant prefers one over the other two. The Seachem nitrogen provides nitrogen in a complexed urea form that is beneficial to a lot of species of plants. Pfertz NPK also had this in it. I think you might notice a difference in some species of plants if you suddenly stop dosing this. Ludwigias in particular love organic forms on nitrogen.
If I remember right you only have two dosers? There is a Seachem forum on APC where you could pose the question whether it is okay to mix their nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium products together for autodosing.
Switching to Seachem Flourish Nitrogen is one of the changes Cavan has made recently and I suspect he will concur that it's worth it.
This is also coming from someone who has mixed his own ferts for a long time and the longer I do it the less I'm convinced it's the way to go.
Advantages of Commercial Ferts:
- stable pH of solutions and preservatives added to keep solutions stable and consistent
- nitrogen sources are complexed making them less available to algae and more available to plants
- chemicals used to mix them are of the highest purity (I've noticed K2SO4 is especially "dirty" when use the lab grade stuff most people use). A lot of folks will claim the cost is significantly cheaper to mix your own, but keep in mind they are using inferior grades of chemicals.
- ease of use
Aaron wrote:Not to be contentious because Jim's method can and does work, but if you want something similar to what you were using I would go with the Seachem line. The Pfertz line used a combination of nitrogen sources. Plants can consume urea, nitrate, or ammonium sources of nitrogen and each species of plant prefers one over the other two. The Seachem nitrogen provides nitrogen in a complexed urea form that is beneficial to a lot of species of plants. Pfertz NPK also had this in it. I think you might notice a difference in some species of plants if you suddenly stop dosing this. Ludwigias in particular love organic forms on nitrogen.
If I remember right you only have two dosers? There is a Seachem forum on APC where you could pose the question whether it is okay to mix their nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium products together for autodosing.
Switching to Seachem Flourish Nitrogen is one of the changes Cavan has made recently and I suspect he will concur that it's worth it.
This is also coming from someone who has mixed his own ferts for a long time and the longer I do it the less I'm convinced it's the way to go.
Advantages of Commercial Ferts:
- stable pH of solutions and preservatives added to keep solutions stable and consistent
- nitrogen sources are complexed making them less available to algae and more available to plants
- chemicals used to mix them are of the highest purity (I've noticed K2SO4 is especially "dirty" when use the lab grade stuff most people use). A lot of folks will claim the cost is significantly cheaper to mix your own, but keep in mind they are using inferior grades of chemicals.
- ease of use
As always Aaron, you amaze me with all of your knowledge. What you say makes sense and I also looked at some threads online which certainly backs up what you say. When I run out of Pfertz, I will go with the AquaVitro line.
You are right that I autodose my larger tank with two peristalic pumps, so I currently mix my macros together. I will go APC and see what Seachem suggests. I could always buy a third pump if I need to.
Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
A bit more explanation: since I have a relatively large tank and only that one to worry about the amounts of NPK/Trace are large enough to make dosing via tsp measures easy. I fully understand that for smaller tanks the tsp measures are too coarse grained to allow for sufficient dosing accuracy.
There's no obvious reason why NPK can't be combined in a single solution as far as I know. A simple test would be to mix some NPK solution in a bottle and look for precipitation over a day or so.
Trace should be separate since I remember vaguely that it will precipitate if combined with NPK.
Jim Miller wrote:There's no obvious reason why NPK can't be combined in a single solution as far as I know. A simple test would be to mix some NPK solution in a bottle and look for precipitation over a day or so.
Trace should be separate since I remember vaguely that it will precipitate if combined with NPK.
Seachem's offical response to my question on the APC forum was: "The products are formulated to be dosed separately for more precision dosing. If you mix the products together they have the potential to precipitate in the bottle, and you may overdose on certain elements, as you don't need as much phosphorous and nitrogen, as you do iron. They will work best in separate containers each."
So, this is a bit of a problem for me since I would prefer not to set up two more peristaltic pumps. In addition to the cost, it is getting pretty crowed behind my tank and I am running out of outlets. I probably am coming close to overloading my outlets as it is.
Also, just FYI, in the AquaVitro line the K is not sold separately. They have it mixed in within their other products. Here are the four products they sell (not including their decholinator, GH and KH products):
Envy – micros
Propel – Fe iron
Synthesis – N nitrogen
Activate - P phosphorus
Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
You asked if you could add N, P and iron together, and I think their response was geared toward specifically that. You should be able to mix the macros without issue. There is an issue mixing iron and phosphate, which can indeed cause precipitation. In addition, I believe that the Envy and Propel cannot be combined because of a reducing agent in one of them. So you'd probably be looking at three pumps to keep it going if you used most of their line.
Cavan wrote:You asked if you could add N, P and iron together, and I think their response was geared toward specifically that. You should be able to mix the macros without issue. There is an issue mixing iron and phosphate, which can indeed cause precipitation. In addition, I believe that the Envy and Propel cannot be combined because of a reducing agent in one of them. So you'd probably be looking at three pumps to keep it going if you used most of their line.
Thanks for the advice Cavan. I was actually thinking the same thing.
Another question, I have not dosed liquid iron in the past. I have just used root tabs (when I remember). If I continue (and remember) to use root tabs, do you think I need to use the liquid iron?
Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
Cavan wrote:You asked if you could add N, P and iron together, and I think their response was geared toward specifically that. You should be able to mix the macros without issue. There is an issue mixing iron and phosphate, which can indeed cause precipitation. In addition, I believe that the Envy and Propel cannot be combined because of a reducing agent in one of them. So you'd probably be looking at three pumps to keep it going if you used most of their line.
Thanks for the advice Cavan. I was actually thinking the same thing.
Another question, I have not dosed liquid iron in the past. I have just used root tabs (when I remember). If I continue (and remember) to use root tabs, do you think I need to use the liquid iron?
Yes, what Cavan said about mixing the ferts.
If you are not noticing iron deficiency with the method you are using I see no need to dose it. In that case you would still only need one extra pump if you were not able to mix the N and P solutions for some reason.
) I try to keep my drop checker in the lime zone. 
