If you use flourish ferts...

debaric

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Feb 2, 2006
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N.J.
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You have to dose 3 times the amount of Nitrogen they suggest to get an optimal 10-20 ppm. 2.5 times the recommended amount for phosforous and 3 times the amount for potassium. What a ripoff liquid ferts are unless you have a really small tank 10g and under.

Dry ferts will be here this week.
 
The flourish recommendations are there for the "casual" plant keeper and aren't great guidelines in the first place. You can certainly keep plants without worrying about testing or target levels at all...the bulk of the price tag is water anyways.
 
I have used flourish on my 29g tank before. Just resently in the last 2 weeks I found the rest of the bottles that I hadn't used up yet. I have been dosing just 1 cap full of trace and comprehensive alternating every other day. Since then I have noticed a change in growth and that the plants are winning against the algae now. I also have dry ferts waiting to use but I figured that I would just use the rest of the bottles up first. Guess they can't be all bad.
 
no they arent bad per se, but they are a ripoff.

You do need to test and probably also need to figure out a target level of nutrients if you have high light and you dont want algae. I guess once you find your sweet spot with the amount of ferts it takes to avoid these issues then its incredibly easy to dose. Until then, its a real pain in the ***.
 
no they arent bad per se, but they are a ripoff.

You do need to test and probably also need to figure out a target level of nutrients if you have high light and you dont want algae. I guess once you find your sweet spot with the amount of ferts it takes to avoid these issues then its incredibly easy to dose. Until then, its a real pain in the ***.

Or just dose, wait and tweak. Even the high end plant keepers rarely test for NPK, if ever.
 
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