Help With Starting Ei

[jkc]

Hi all,

I have a Rena Classic aquarium 48Lx20Wx28H, I have recently upgraded the lighting so I now have 4x30W T8 & 2x55w T5. I believe my tank after displacement holds around 86 Gallons which means I currently have about 2.8 WPG. I am running pressurized CO2 with an Aquamedic external CO2 diffuser.

I have the CO2 running at 30ppm and believe with the amount of light I have I need to go EI. I will eventually be using dry ferts however for the time being I am going to use the Seachem range.

Last night I did a large 50% water change. I should have done some tests to see what my nitrate readings were and added day ones dose but it was getting a bit late.

Im not sure what the nitrate/phoshate readings are in our tap water but when doing water changes I use 50% tap & 50% RO as I keep Discus and our tap water is extremely hard down here.

So far I have worked out that:

5ml Seachem Nitrogen = 1ppm Nitrate
8ml Seach Iron = 0.2ppm Iron
17ml Seachem Phosphorus = 0.2 ppm Phosphate

My programme will be:

Day 1 50% water change, add KNO3 & KH2PO4 (will work out how much, expecting probably 5ppm increase)
(I missed yesterdays dosing so will top up this evening with KNO3, I wont add KH2PO4 as I will be dosing FE)
Day 2 Add 22ml Trace, add 8ml Iron
Day 3 top up KNO3 & KH2PO4
(For the next few weeks I will do some tests to see how quickly KNO3 & KH2PO4 is being used. I am going to aim to keep it at 10/1)
Day 4 Add 22ml Trace
Day 5 same as day 3
Day 6 same as day 4
Day 7 same as day 1

Questions:

1: I am a little concerned that I will only be adding Iron once durring the week. Do you think it may be worth dosing iron on days 4 & 6 or should I wait to see if there are any signs of defficiencies first?

2: Is it ok to mix Solutions into a container with some water and store & shold they be refrigerated?

3: Should I be using Seachem Flourish or will be KNO3 & KH2PO4 take care of that? - should I be dosing more K?

3: How does the above sound? - ill be waiting for someone to say expensive!!

Thanks in advance, I look forward to your comments

Regards

James

 

[BigIan]

1: I am a little concerned that I will only be adding Iron once durring the week. Do you think it may be worth dosing iron on days 4 & 6 or should I wait to see if there are any signs of defficiencies first?

I`dc wait for defficencies to manifest before dosing iron most people i know only ad iron as trace and have no problems,

2: Is it ok to mix Solutions into a container with some water and store & shold they be refrigerated?

yep mine live in the cupbard under the tank, just keep them cool and dark and they should be fine...

3: Should I be using Seachem Flourish or will be KNO3 & KH2PO4 take care of that? - should I be dosing
more K?

flourish is simply trace elements.. if your going to be purchasing dry mixed firts then you should also purchase a trace mix the one from aqua essentials is an excelent choice

3: How does the above sound? - ill be waiting for someone to say expensive!!

Its not that expencive you have the expencive parts already (lights and presurised co2) What will you be using as a substrate? i peosonaly would use a fertilising substrate to feed the roots of plants aswell as the water column fertilisation

 

[jkc]

Thanks for your reply Ian!

I currently have Eco-complete for a substrate. When I moved house I set the tank up with the intention of going full EI but I wanted to upgrade the lighting before I did. The tank originally only came with 4XT8 30W tubes (1.3WPG). I was therefore only using an all round fert (Seachem Flourish).

You mentioned that Flourish is simply trace however I understood that Flourish also contains the macro elements. I currently have both Flourish & Flourish trace but intend on only using Flourish Trace.

Regards

James

 

[BigIan]

If http/www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Flourish.html is the product that your thinking of then you will see it provides very little in the way of nitrogen phosphate and potasium

 

[jkc]

I knew there wasnt a lot of nitrogen, phosphate & potassium in it but I assumed that as they also had a trace only product I would use this instead of Flourish!?

Would you use Flourish or Flourish Trace as your trace additive??

Bet your gonna say use one & when that runs out use the other! I can see that there would be one advantage of using Flourish as it contains potassium which I wont be dosing!?

 

[BigIan]

id go with the flourish as pound for pound you seem to get more....

and you would be dosing potassium its in the kh2po4

 

[George Farmer]

Hi jkc

My advice would be to keep it ultra simple. Use up all your Seachem products then -

(Assuming heavily planted with minimal NO3 and PO4 in tap/RO water)

Day 1 - 3/4 teaspoon KNO3, 1/4 teaspoon KH2PO4
Day 2 - 20ml Seachem Flourish or Tropica AquaCare Nutrition or 1/4 teaspoon Trace Mix powder
Day 3 - see Day 1
Day 4 - see Day 2
Day 5 - see Day 1
Day 6 - see Day 2
Day 7 - 50% water change

There should be sufficient iron and potassium with the above program.

Adding the dry ferts directly to the tank is fine and is so much easier than mixing solutions, ideal for larger tanks like yours. If dissolving is an issue for you then get a cup of tank water, mix the dry fert, then add the water to the tank.

 

[jkc]

Thanks George,

I will definately be going down the dry fert route in the near future. I currently help out at a LFS and a while back purchased liquid ferts at a very good price so I may as well use them up before putting my hand in my pocket again!

I have a lot of people come into the store asking for advice about plants and what they need. Some being low tech others having halides above their tank. I have found that many people want to be able to get what they need there and then & unfortunately dry ferts arent available from your LFS so they buy the liquid ferts. I personally think this is a good starting point and as soon as people start to see the effect it has on there tank & what they need to do to keep it this way they look for the cheaper options i.e Dry Ferts!

I know you promote dry ferts as much as you can (which is the correct thing to do) but I do personally feel that a Pinned topic on liquid Ferts would be a good for us lazy beggers! Problem is there is so many of them!!!

 

[George Farmer]

I do personally feel that a Pinned topic on liquid Ferts would be a good for us lazy beggers! Problem is there is so many of them!!!

I am lazy too, and have a limited budget. That's why EI with dry ferts is ideal for me and many others. Perhaps one day the shops will stock dry ferts - Aqua Essentials caught on to this ages ago.

A pinned thread on EI using off-the-shelf liquid ferts is an idea indeed. I wonder how may people would prefer to take that route though? How many LFS sell any ferts containing N and P? Not many....yet.

They could always use Tropica AquaCare Nutrition+ that contains trace and N and P. Now that is a solution for "lazy beggers", and certainly an option I would consider. Not a product I would EI with though, just dose as per the tank's needs, rather than "overdosing" like EI.

 

[jkc]

Perhaps one day the shops will stock dry ferts - Aqua Essentials caught on to this ages ago.
[/quote]


Now that would be good!!!

 

[George Farmer]

Perhaps one day the shops will stock dry ferts - Aqua Essentials caught on to this ages ago.

Now that would be good!!!

Don't you work in your LFS?

 

[jkc]

[/quote]
Don't you work in your LFS?
[/quote]


Yes, but I have no idea how we would go about trying to stock it. I guess we would have to contact Aqua Essentials!? Plus were only one store, it would be nice if Dry ferts were available in most if not ll aquatic centres!

 

[MoreCoffee]

A pinned thread on EI using off-the-shelf liquid ferts is an idea indeed. I wonder how may people would prefer to take that route though? How many LFS sell any ferts containing N and P? Not many....yet

Seachem have an 'EI type' of guide available on their site, it covers the full Flourish range of liquid ferts.
It has all the ingredients of EI with N, P, K & Trace, but I dont think it's really meant for 'high tech' tanks. Seachem Plant Dosage Chart

It's limited to a 5% water change. I think the doses would need to be increased for a high light, high co2, high plant mass tank, but I did see some good growth with it on my Tropiquarium88 low light tank (1.8wpg), with DIY CO2. However even then I was doing minimum 10% water changes. I didn't use the 'Day 7' Prime or Buffers etc.



Al

 

[jkc]

Thanks Mr G,

I had seen there guide and had assumed that it wasnt for a high tech tank due to the low water change as you mentioned. I have thought about taking this into the store though to give people an idea of what they could/should be using to help there plants grow etc. Plus im sure many of our customers probably only do about a 5% water change anyways!

Regards

James