I have been researching both methods and I think I am going to go with EI but I was hoping to get some opinions here before I make my final decision. So first some background. I have a 54g tank that is on its way to becoming heavily planted. Substrate includes Flourite and I have been dosing 1-2x a week with Flourish. No CO2 and at this time I don't intend to start with pressurized CO2 but I am going to start dosing with Excel. My goal here is to really just to have a lush vibrant planted aquarium and maybe speed up growth a little (I'm not looking for explosive growth). Lighting consists of a T5 HO with two 10,000k daylight bulbs and I'm currently running it for 8 hours a day. I'm considering replacing one bulb with something in the 6,000k range and reducing lighting to 6 hours.
Here is a link to my journal if anyone wants to see pics of the tank...
http
/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/428494-my-planted-54g-bow-front/?p=3626640
So my thought is to do a modified version of EI whereby I would dose at lower levels than what is recommended for my tank size given that I'm not going to be using pressurized CO2. I may also do some testing at first even though EI does not require this just to get a baseline for parameters and then once I see how the plants react I can make adjustments accordingly. As for dosing nitrogen, I have a pretty full fish load so my nitrates are already in the 20ppm range so I'm thinking I may not dose nitrogen unless I see my nitrates drop.
So my questions to anyone reading this are as follows:
1) What do you think of my plan? Any advice would be much appreciated
2) To anyone currently using EI what has been your experience? Pros vs cons?
3) To anyone using PPS-Pro, why should I be using that method instead of EI?
Thanks for the help!
Here is a link to my journal if anyone wants to see pics of the tank...
http
/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/428494-my-planted-54g-bow-front/?p=3626640So my thought is to do a modified version of EI whereby I would dose at lower levels than what is recommended for my tank size given that I'm not going to be using pressurized CO2. I may also do some testing at first even though EI does not require this just to get a baseline for parameters and then once I see how the plants react I can make adjustments accordingly. As for dosing nitrogen, I have a pretty full fish load so my nitrates are already in the 20ppm range so I'm thinking I may not dose nitrogen unless I see my nitrates drop.
So my questions to anyone reading this are as follows:
1) What do you think of my plan? Any advice would be much appreciated
2) To anyone currently using EI what has been your experience? Pros vs cons?
3) To anyone using PPS-Pro, why should I be using that method instead of EI?
Thanks for the help!
