Advanced Fert ?

T

tinkerman

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Mar 6, 2007
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I have a 29 gal planted tank,4.2 wpg(pc lighting),diy co2, and ferts from greg watson. Ok so the tank has been running for alittle over 9 mo now and see some fast growth. my ? is when your seeing a deffiency in your plants, so I'll add what ever I think its deffient in and start seeing some other deffience. I've read alot on all that goes with keeping plants and noone ever mentions anything about how to keep everthing balanced. I've read Greg Watson's e-book,Rex Grigg's site,Chuck Gladd's site, and a few others 3-4 times all the way though. Right now I'm adding 15ml Potassium Nitrate, 5 ml Potassium Phosphate, 3/8 tsp Potassim Sulfate, 5 ml Plantex, 2 ml Iron, 4 ml Magnessium(Epson salt), and 1/2 tsp Barr's gh booster. I found a site which says you can get deffiency's from to much of one thing which will imbalance another so you will so a deffiency in it but its not raelly deffient in it at all, just upseting the fert balance. Can anyone shed some light on this for how you ajust ferts to get the right balance. Oh and I am very moderatly planted.

Tanks in advance
Tinkerman
 
I'm thinking in your case it's likely a CO2 deficiency rather than any fert deficiency if you're having growth problems. Do you have a drop checker to see how much CO2 is being injected by your DIY system?

Light and CO2 drives growth, the more light you have the more demand on CO2 and ferts. If you provide enough ferts then you may be limited by the CO2.

My tanks usually have excess nutrients since I overdose on them to ensure they don't run out, no growth problems as long as my CO2 is in order.
 
co2 is at 20-30 ppm. 2 1 gal gas cans and forced reaction. I usally mesure by just dropping 1 ph. Plants supplies are hard to find in my town and I now have the shop keepers asking me questions.
 
drop checkers are inexpensive pieces of equipment that you can order online, they're common on eBay. Great to know for sure whether you have enough CO2.

With over 4.2wpg there's little room for error. Can you reduce the light down to around 3wpg? If not I'd increase the dosage for everything and see if that improves growth.
 
See that is what I am wondering about. If I upp say potassium Nitrate do I have to add that much more of everything else or can you up just that and still remain balanced. The reason I'm interetsed is my ludwigia repens and narrow leaf have pin holes theat enlarge and brown leaf tissue, which would be a sigh of Potassium Sulfate. One of the sites I have found on deffiency's says an imbalance in mg can cause the same look. If you have to up everything together what happens if say your nitrate gets to like 60 ppm to get everything balanced. This is the site I found on fert deffiences I foundhttp://www.finostrom.com.gr/images/aqua/fertilizers/map.htm
But you are right my co2 levels are off a bit cause I have a little bba but it is very little and can only tell its thier if you look really hard. All my mixs are in 250ml water if that makes any difference. Except Potassium Sulfate thats dry.
 
Ferts doesn't have to be completely balanced. You can have more of one or another and as long as both are present the plants will be able to take advantage of them. Now it is possible to overdose to a point where it becomes detrimental to plant growth but that's what weekly water changes are for, to prevent excess buildup.
 
Yeah, the whole EI method is more about having more than enough to not have a defficiencey. Its not necassarily a perfect balance your seeking, but non-limiting nutrients. if you find that one is way off though, like in your nitrate example, you can reduce that one. However Tom Barr has stated in the past that KNO3 has plenty of potassium so unless your potassium uptake is unusually high you shouldnt need 60ppm nitrate to get sufficient potassium. Especially if your doing potassium phosphate also, since thats got some more K in it too.
 
at different ph levels, plants absorb different amounts of nutriets at different rates. since the ph in aquariums should be constant, certain elements will be absorbed more readily than others. this ties in with the amounts of fertilizer added, if the ph will only allow so much fertilizer to be absorbed then adding more fertilizer wouldnt be effective. As for adjusting amounts of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, I say go for it, just do it slowly and systematically so you can remember what changes were made to the fertilizing routine. I also believe that rarely a deficiency of a micro nutrient can cause macro nutrients to be unavailable, making it seem like there is a macro deficiency when it's actually a micro deficiency, this can be deceiving.
 
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