About ready to kill something

wannabefishguru said:

okay i know that i am thick headed but jesh can nobody put fetilers and testing in retard man's terms????????

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ROFL! :soda: OMG there goes another latte!

Wannabefishguru that's EXACTLY how I felt when I first started reading that.

Hey, if you really want your head to spin, read HappyChem's article on Water Chemistry in the articles section. It'll make the ferts guide seem like Dr. Seus

Roan

K2SO4 = potassium sulfate

i have a quantum physics book handy, so.... hehe, wont do you much good unless you want a probable position of your ion's little spinnie things.

PO4 will not affect KH... KH is a measurement of CO3 in your water. PO4 WILL effect pH by changing the H+ concentration. (i think this is right).

in any dosing regiment, either happy chem's or Barr's, you need to replace the dosing mixture according to the water you are changing... if you take out 5 gallons, treat five gallons of water with your mix and so on. make sure you top of your tank with fresh water before you remove WC water to keep your measurements accurate.

under low or maybe even medium light, potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus are the most important. unless you are adding disolved CO2 (carbon dioxide), chances are you will be fine without dosing the trace elements in the beginning. i use tap water for traces.

while water softening systems do replace sodium ions with calcium ions and raises the TDS of the system, removing the calcium ions does have positive effects, particularly if you are breeding. many freshwater fish eggs are notorious for being ultrasensitive to Ca+. something to do with the eggs' 'shell.'

umm... there were more questions there... but i don't want to get windy.

HTH.

Phosphate can act as buffer (shorth-lived, but a buffer) and therefore can affect KH, which is a measure of the alkalinity of the water, aka the buffering capaacity of the water. KH is not a measure of the CO3/HCO3 in the water solely - it is a measure of alkalinilty which in the wild is most often garbonates/bicarbonates. In utility-processed water and in tanks, it may not be mainly carbonate/bicarbonte. The KH test is a titration, how much acid you have to add to reach a certain end point, it is not in any way a specific ion test, instead it measures resistance to shift in the pH.

IMHO & IME, bioavailable carbon (CO2 or other such as Excel) is every bit as important as NPK. Carbon, C, makes up about 40% of plant dry mass, far more than any one of NPK.

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..(emg sticks thumb in mouth and goes to sit with wannabefishguru .... )

Wanna, it's not really all that difficult or complicated.
You have all the info. on what to use and how to get it. All you need is how much to add.
The nutrient amounts and type depend on your lighting, because that determines how fast the plants will need and use them. Low/moderate lighting requires only minimum dosing that can be gotten from an all-in-one fertilizer. Higher light will require more attention to detail and more nutrients.
The big three (macros) are: N=nitrogen; P=phosphorus; K=potassium
The others (trace minerals): are all available in a variety of mixes such as Flourish or Plantex CSM+B (B stands for extra Boron).
Mg and Ca are optional depending on your water's parameters or how much additional detail (mentioned above) you want to apply.
Carbon is also optional, but will help in either case (low or high light). It can be injected as a gas or dosed as a liquid (Seachem's Excel).
The drill is as follows (roughly). You do a 50% water change on Sat.(or any day of your choice), followed by the required dosing of the big three. The following day you begin dosing your traces. They can be dosed daily or every other day.
Tom Barr's index lays out a basic guideline for dosing during the week which will work without testing AS LONG AS YOU ARE SURE TO PERFORM YOUR WATER CHANGE EVERY SATURDAY.
Excel should be dosed daily in accordance with the directions on the bottle.
I prefer to dose and test, but many people are following his regimen and seem pleased with the results. IMO, there are basic test kits that a person should have just to know the parameters of their water, particularly their tap water.
I change water on Sat., dose the traces every day and test for N and P on Wed. to see what the plants have used. If there is still an ample supply of both I don't dose any Macros until the following water change.
I can't make it any more plain than that. If you have further questions feel free to ask.

Len

Now THAT is much more understandable !! Simple and to the point for those of us who are chemically illiterate/challenged.

Thanks Dj....I'm copying this to documents...

Emg said:

Now THAT is much more understandable !! Simple and to the point for those of us who are chemically illiterate/challenged.

Thanks Dj....I'm copying this to documents...

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This should definately be a sticky!

Heck, even I understood that!


:cool2: