Dosing

[Aaron]

Some of you have asked that I put up some of the dosing info I talked about at the last meeting. If you haven't already read Ben's article for beginners that's a good place to start. I also found this site very helpful when I was first starting out and I still use the downloadable dosing calculator.

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/

[dmartin72]

Could you help me with EI for my 3 tanks?

[dmartin72]

Also, what is the best way to slow things down (lights on for less time, dosing less, using smaller doses of CO2) with stem plants without inducing an algae bloom?

[Aaron]

Reduce the lighting on the 50 gallon once you have the plants where you want them. I would think you could sustain them on just one of those 96 watt bulbs.

Can the bulbs be turned on separately? I stagger my lighting so that 100% is only on for 8 hours a day. That really seems to help with algae.

How long has the aquasoil been in there?

[dmartin72]

The lights can be turned on seperately. What kind of staggering and how long should I keep the lights on? What about dosing? The aquasoil has been there for less than 2 months.

[Aaron]

You might try having the front light turn on for 12 hours and the back light for only 6-7 hours in between that. You will still get plenty of growth time and algae will be less likely to start appearing.

I usually start dosing nitrate and phosphate at a ratio of about 1:3 or so. That is on the high side for phoshpate probably, but I hate green spot algae and that keeps it at bay.

Try dosing the follwing:

Every Day (or split up macro and micro every other and double the doses)

Nitrate 3 ppm
Phosphate 1 ppm
Trace 3 ml
Iron 3 ml

I only have my CO2 turn on with the lights too.