Ei And Going On Holiday

[Miss Wiggle]

OK so Ian's setitng up his high tech planted in the next few months, so we were talking about EI last night, got 2 questions for you all

1 - Ian was telling me how you can spot the deficiencies in your plants, like pin prick holes for lack of phosphate (example might be wrong but you get what I mean). So this prompted me to have a look at some of my plants, and I noticed said pin prick holes..... now I have no intention of going full EI on that tank, but would just adding the things that are missing be any good, like just adding extra phosphate. Or would that throw the balance of your tank out of whack?

2 - Ian also mentioned in passing that we'd never be going on holiday once it's up and running...... some discussions followed ......... so what do you do with a tank that needs daily maintenance if your away for a week or so. In the past I've just left the tanks or at best had someone come in 2/3 times a week to feed them and check they're all OK. So obviously if you could find someone reliable and with a few spare brain cells you could make up syringe's for each day and label them and they'd just squirt one in the tank daily.

But if you couldn't do that. My thoughts would be you do a big water change before you go so get most of the ferts out of the water, set the lighting so you've got something like 1.5wpg coming on 10hrs a day, enough to sustain the life for a week or so but not enough that you'd get a massive algae bloom, and turn your co2 off while your away. But Ian say's the substrate ferts (he's planning on ADA) would be sufficient to create problems? Would that work, would you come home to a tank full of algae or not? I reckon you'd have a fair bit of pruning and TLC needed and it might take a couple of weeks to recover to it's full glory but it'd be salveagable.

 

[JamesC]

1. You'll be fighting a losing battle as fixing one deficiency often leads to another one. Why not add all the ferts to start with as it's so much simpler than trying to identify whats wrong and testing the water. When you get into a routine it's just as easy as feeding your fish. Trying to detect deficiencies can sometimes be very difficult as one deficiency will mask another one. btw pin holes is a potassium deficiency.

2. Going on holiday can sometimes cause a headache. I find the best thing to do is a large water change and lower the lighting to about 1.5wpg and make sure the tank is well dosed. I keep CO2 on but turn it down just a little bit. When I return it's a matter of doing a prune and a water change. The high light demanding plants normally manage fine for a week or two.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

1. You'll be fighting a losing battle as fixing one deficiency often leads to another one. Why not add all the ferts to start with as it's so much simpler than trying to identify whats wrong and testing the water. When you get into a routine it's just as easy as feeding your fish. Trying to detect deficiencies can sometimes be very difficult as one deficiency will mask another one. btw pin holes is a potassium deficiency.

2. Going on holiday can sometimes cause a headache. I find the best thing to do is a large water change and lower the lighting to about 1.5wpg and make sure the tank is well dosed. I keep CO2 on but turn it down just a little bit. When I return it's a matter of doing a prune and a water change. The high light demanding plants normally manage fine for a week or two.

Thanks for the reply James,

i thought that might be the case with single ferts, might just get an all in oen type fert and start using that, gonna change the blue bulb for a white one too so I've got 2 'proper' wpg on that tank. pottasium, right, well i was nearly there, starts with the same letter!! lol

cool thanks, that doesn't sound too bad then. not like we have loads of holidays anyway (can't bloody afford them all our money goes on fishtanks) but none the less it's nice to know what to do!