Thats what I am saying, I have all my fish at the top gasping for air and religious EI dosing in my tank but yet I find new algae growth... im sick of spending hundreds of dollars on ferts and co2 systems and lighting for algae problems..i'm just getting alittle frustrated

LOL !

A few questions for you.

1. What level Co2 are you dosing ?

2. What BPM rate are you dosing it ?

3. Are you seeing well balanced pearling ?

4. What volume is this tank ?

5. What are the lighting parameters ?

6. What is the avg. temp ?

I'm not experiencing any of these ailments. My fish aren't gasping for air. NADA ???

There are alot of variables in individuals tanks. Hell, even the ambient oxygen level in the room would factor in. Some houses are extremely low oxygen during the winter. Poor ventilation, Poor metering of gas, and high heat will all rob the room of O2. Altitude plays a huge part as well. ANYTHING that affects the ambient O2 level WILL factor in.

The individual tanks DOC will have the single largest Affect. Many folks start out with problems before they ever even attempt EI. They make their best attempt to remedy the situation, but lots of residual components may persist.

I know this based on actual experience. I have serviced literally thousands of tanks going on 20 years now. Why did my clients in Vail, and Estes Park CO lose the most livestock, and have the most difficult and persistent problems ??? 99% of which abated once O2 reactors were installed.

Co2 is only 1/2 the equation.

Ambient temp changes O2. Excessive lighting requires excessive Co2. Once the lights go out you've got a problem ! Excessive lighting contributes to excessive algae straining the limits of any balance or buffer the plants may provide. There is a breaking point !!! Sooner or later you you have to identify the root cause. You yourself know more about your own individual tank than anyone else. Why on earth would you rely on them to fix your problems ?

For the record it's Human nature to place the blame as far from ourselves as possible. It's not a myth !

Mi Dos Centavos, Prof M

But I can say I did the same type of experiment and did not see the same results.
There are many alternatives.
Many folks got algae when their PO4 was high also even though it did not happen to me.......



Why might limiting PO4 cause this?
What role does PO4 play if you limit it in a high light/CO2 tank?
Do you think it slows down the plants growth or speeds it up?

I have very soft water, so do my clients.


I do not think it's the least bit "clear". I do this and have no issues and I have a KH of 2-3.

Last year, for about 2 years prior, I had KH of 20ppm.
I never added baking soda nor needed to.
Recently I used no KH , just pure RO and GH booster.

Again, no such issues and I grew Ammannia.

Here's an old pic:

I mean I can post data and suggest the opposite and know why the growth slows down when you limit PO4.

I can explain alternative hypothesis to your notion, but can you explain why I can grow the plant at high KH, or low KH just dandy?

It's a weed.
It needs to be happy over time, not just one test.
It takes a long time to recover from poor conditions.
When something else is not in balance(If PO4 is at 2ppm, we can safely say it's not limiting), limiting PO4 will slow that effect from the unknown limitation down and rectify it.

That sounds more like what you and Kekon are seeing.
I know you think I am being crazy here, but I'm not.

I've gone thorough this mess and tried to figure it out.
I've seen the same type of thing and drawn similar conclusions only to prove my self wrong later.

Every time someone said they had issues with these plants, I come along and try to repeat the same experiement and am unable to.

You know they also said the same thing a few years ago about K+ excesses.

Remember that one?

Maybe this year they got it right and somehow I just keep getting lucky?
I have to be one of the luckyist plant growers on the face of the planet if so

I do not base what I do on luck.
Take a long look at Erik Leung's Massive stand of Ammannia gracilius on the AGA contest. He had the nutrients off the charts, all of them.
I've run high nutrients with it as well.

It's a very fast growing hungery demanding plant with more light.

Here's a tid bit that will help you:

Look when you make a hypothesis, you need to go through and be honest about it, be critical of your own observations and conclusions. Try to prove your own hypothesis wrong.

That's what I do.

If I cannot for whatever reason, I set that idea aside as a tenentative possiblility, if so, I toss it out and make a new hypothesis that is better able to explain things.

In the course of doing this for high K+ and Ammannia some years back, I also had very high PO4 and low KH.

So I am pretty sure the stunting issue is not related to high PO4 directly.
I also have other folks in the SF bay, they all have very soft KH's etc, they grow Ammannia as large as fingers with high PO4 as well.

It's not just my one or two tanks at home, it's a large wide comparative slice of tanks and methods.



Regards,
Tom Barr

True.


They did this same thing to me about PO4 a decade ago, then it was excess Fe, then high NO3, then GH, then algae species, then large water changes are bad, then NH4 is wonderful..........

I've never suggested folks add lethal CO2 levels.
I have on the other hand really made a point to measure CO2 and focus on it.

You are getting into a semantics and "who said what" trap.

So while one guy may be wrong, this one guy has been right a lot, but certainly is far far from infallible. I've made a lot more mistakes, a lot more than most, in effort to understand plants and aquatic habitats.

Through many errors, you learn not to be so quick to jump on the wagon.
You then go back and see if there are counter examples that might not be explained by the hypothesis.

This exact type of senario occured with high K+ and this same plant.

Now what are the odds that both low PO4 and low K+ help some folks, and others have no such issues?

Can you repeat both situations on purpose?

You need to see if you over looked something here. I've looked, I've done the homework, set up a test and tried to reproduce things based on other folks hypothesis.

I've been adding lots of PO4 for well over 10 years with both hard and soft KH's.
I've seen stunting in the plant.

But it had nothing to do with low KH and high PO4.

There is something else occuring and stunting the plants other than K+, PO4, and if the CO2 is also good, then CO2 etc as well.

Ruling things out by one and also looking at things besides just the nutrients and CO2 also helps a great deal.

I am only one person. But when folks do haphazard methods and assume things based on one test run or one single measurement, then they also fall into the same trap as listening to one person.

If you want to do the test and be careful about it, fine, I'll help and give some feedback, but you are not being honest with yourselves when you ignore good testing and other alternative hypothesis.

I've heard this same arguement from a dozen folks over the years and each time they have been wrong.

But by making mistakes, we learn.
I've thought all sorts of things caused this or that in the past. After running enough test to see if I could stunt a plant on purpose or not, I really have a good idea why and what occurs.

Maybe I am wrong but you, nor Kekon have ever addressed the questions nor alternative hypothesis either, instead, suggesting I'm the bad guy and may be wrong(I might be too, but you've not shown it)

When you ingore the questions, and attack the person, then you are off topic.
If you can go after the real issue, plant growth and what and why might some have issues and some do not, then you will learn a lot more and stop taking things personally.

By your definition and arguement, I woul also be wrong about algae and PO4, by high fe = algae, by NO3 being bad for fish and toxic.

I was the only guy saying they did not at one point, I was also the only guy saying high K+ did not induce stunting with this same species years ago as well, I added a lot of PO4 and my KH was 20ppm when I did that test also

My plants did not stunt.

Maybe I am just lucky?
I do not buy that.

I was the only guy saying heating cables do not work nor do what the makers claim. Just because I am alone, does not imply I am wrong either.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Ok, that sounds interesting. Just have to nail that last thingy then.

Once EI turned my algae hell to award winning tank. But this curlingthingy puzzles the begeebees out of me.

Let's say I see more curling with more Mg and PO4, the theory here is that by me dosing more of these some other nutrient got limiting. I would like to know which you guys think it could be if I dose KNO3, K2SO4, MgSO4, KH2PO4 and micros (CSM-like) with 50-95% wcs each week.

I've been a bit careful with Mg and Micros, so I guess those could be my next thing to up a bit...

I feel your pain, I've felt precisely the way you do right now.
You know I'm obsessed about plants and things like that drove me over the edge so to speak and made me into what I am today.

2nd AGA International Aquascaping Contest

Here's Erik's tank.
He had things pretty juicy in terms of nutrients.
I'd suggested mega dosing, where we add lots of ferts right before a water change.

Now you can limit growth and also allow for better assimilation rates using a PO4 limited approach.

When you lift the limitation, then growth kicks into over drive.
Try limiting PO4 and then adding it and watch the pearling effect(a few min to 1-2 hours!)

When you remove that limitation clearly, then you get a pull of the NO3.
NO3 and CO2 uptake are upregulated fast!!!

So the demand for CO2 and NO3 dramatically increases.

Now many do not want to monkey with non limiting conditions and feel they can do well with PO4 limiting approachs, this works and so does all limiting approach, when you use less light.

If you try limiting light to control growth and algae, this works best IME.

Then the demand for CO2, NO3, PO4, Traces etc goes wayyyyyyyyyy down.
And that';s obvious as to why.

When you increase the rate of growth, you need to increase both the amount and the frequency of dosing.

If you over look one thing, you end up drawing weird ideas, I know, I had them as well.

Everytime it was like "Ahah! add more K, or more PO4, or more TMG!!"
But it really was not one thing, it's more holistic.

Once I figured that since I have more light, I need more CO2, then everything made sense.

And it also makes sense in terms of non CO2 methods, Excel, PPS etc.
You can see these effects.

It explains a lot for virtually all methods.
Not just EI.

When folks get pissed at algae or other issues, they need to see if they can make the method work. I've done many methods and done everything I can to make them work and see the trade offs.

I've doubted a lot myself there but eventually kept after it and figured it out.



Regards,
Tom Barr

Try TMG please

Pretty please?
I think that will make things more in line with other folks and it is better IME/IMO.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Yes ok, they have the new line "Aquacare" in one of the stores here, I guess it's the ordinary TMG with a new label?

Tank specs: 60 litres with very bad lighting, 15 watts Triton and 2x7 watts economy bulbs with DIY aluminium reflectors. I feel this is a low-light tank compared to what I've run before. 11 hours, but I've changed that to 9,5 a couple of days ago.

CO2 at > 3 bubbles/sec with mist-reactor. I get both mist and a good low pH (drop checker). No fish so I can really blast the tank.

Now I do 90% wc once a week or when I want to dose more nutrients in the middle of the week. The dose have been 0.2 tsp KNO2, 0.2 tsp K2SO4, 0.2 tsp Dolomite, 5 mls of CSM (TMG-lookalike-mix with K2SO4, MgSO4) and 2 mls of KH2PO4 (2 tsp in 200 mls). My own calculations says this should give me around:
12 ppm NO3, 16 ppm K, 1.3 ppm PO4, 0.1 ppm Fe.

I think my micros have acted weird on me several times, so suggesting trying TMG for a while seems like a good idea. I have already tried that without noticing any special improvement a year ago - but I can't swear the CO2 was ok back then. I was trying mist and stopped measuring pH.