Cloudy Without Cycling?

[aquaidoka]

I use liquid Flourish. Half a cap (2.5 mL / 30 Gal) per week. It carries:
Total Nitrogen 0.07%
Available Phosphate ( P2O5) 0.01%
Calcium (Ca) 0.14%
Magnesium (Mg) 0.11%
Sulfur (S) 0.2773%
Boron (B) 0.009%
Chlorine (Cl) 1.15%
Cobalt (Co) 0.0004%
Copper (Cu) 0.0001%
Iron (Fe) 0.32%
Manganese (Mn) 0.0118%
Molybdenum (Mo) 0.0009%
Sodium (Na) 0.13%
Zinc (Zn) 0.0007%

Simple recalculation shows that I create ~0.1 ppm of nitrogen in 28 gallons if it would be in form of nitrate per week. It is negligible in comparison with nitrates, which bacteria should produce... Is that Flourish any good?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, that is the "plain" Flourish and yes it is good (if expensive, like all of these compared to dry mixing.) I use that for dosing my tank when the neighborhood kids are doing it when I'm on vacation, since then they only have to do two liquids, the Excel and the plain Flourish. When I'm doing it myself I use all the separate Flourish nutrient bottles so that I can customize the levels a bit more.

In my case the principle I'm shooting for is "reduced EI," a nutrient regime that can be used in conjunction with the "low-light, slow-grower" approach. The limiting factor is the relatively poor Carbon uptake I get by relying only on liquid carbon dosing rather than real CO2. Since I'm carbon limited I want my selection of plants to be slow growers and my light that is driving the system to be relatively low.

By far one of the most important principles of EI is that the nutrient levels need to be "reset" on a regular basis, normally on a weekly basis if possible, but many of us who travel will miss weekends and others of us who are quite dedicated will change water more than once a week. By doing the water change, all the nutrient leftovers are reset way down below any level that would create an excess. Then the daily EI dosing is designed to provide enough of each type of nutrient that none of them are a limiting factor.

Personally, I think we are all actually "babes in the wood" when it comes to truly knowing what nutrient levels our plants would really need at a given moment and not going too far overboard, because I think even the best botanists would have arguments over it. But I am not even educated enough in botany (I only ever had undergraduate level courses in botanical topics) or horticultural experience to know the extent or nature of my deficiencies, lol.

To further review the EI (Estimative Index) idea which I'm sure you're probably familiar with, the tandem principle along with the "reset" is that each nutrient is ideally *over* supplied somewhat so that it will not be a limiting factor. Of course, simply -providing- all the right nutrients does not mean we understand the various difficulties that individual species may have with the actual uptake and use of an indivitual nutrient and therein we find our ignorance on the scientific level I presume.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[aquaidoka]

Wow! Without a doubt, you are dealing with this question on a level of a real botanist (you don't need a degree, when you work for many years with one type of more or less small closed ecosystem, and can beat many PhDs on that topic there). With all my desire to do everything as best as I can, I'd better stay on the level of your neighborhood kids - just add the "plain" Flourish . Well, and yesterday evening I started purging CO2 through my contraption. It works as suggested! I'll rearrange a bit everything in aquarium and post the picture of the CO2 dispenser here. pH dropped from about 7.5 to 6.9 overnight. Now, as I understand, I should check also KH to see if have correct levels of CO2, should I (or with 2 cups of sugar + 1/2 tsp of yeast it cannot be too much for my 29 Gal)?

 

[waterdrop]

It sounds like you are planning to use a chart to determine your CO2 levels and if I'm remembering right, the planted guys really don't like that, they always seem to recommend using one of those little glass checker beakers that goes between yellow and green - you put a calibrated liquid in there - I'm not up on it, although I bet its somewhere in one of the PARC documents (the pinned docs at the top of the planted section.) WD

 

[aquaidoka]

Ok. The contraption I designed and described above was prepared and worked nicely. However, on each two drops produced in the yeast reactor about one drop went to the HOB filter head. Thus, it was not as efficient as expected. Here it is:

Now instead of that contraption I designed usual reactor to work on power head. Not one bubble is wasted here -- everything becomes dissolved. This one now is in a testing stage and works waaaaay better:

 

[waterdrop]

o that's so cool - totally jealous -- you are having fun

 

[aquaidoka]

Thanks for guidance, WD, so I have that fun!

 

[aquaidoka]

Ok. The water's clean now. Main thread on this topic is here and clean aquarium is below. Thanks everybody for your help!

 

[waterdrop]

Looks great!