I was reading through EI and found a 20 gallon example tank at 5.5 WPG dosing 15ml a week of trace. I have a 55 gallon at 4.7 WPG and had up to the point of seeing this example tank only been dosing 14ml a week of trace according to instructions on bottle. I use Flourish for trace. Is Flourish a good trace mix? I just recently bought a 5 liter container of TMG but there are no dosing suggestions on label. I intend to use up the rest of my Flourish stock and then switch over to TMG as I notice how fond of TMG many of you including Tom are of it. So based on the 20 gallon EI example tank I've upped my trace dosage to 30ml a week (4.3 ml x 7 days a week). Does this seem correct? After weekly partial I dose trace and 1/2 tsp KNO3 and then over the next six days dose a total of 1/4 tsp KH2PO4 and 1 tsp KNO3 along with daily trace and then it is partial time again. I have pressure CO2 with drop check indicator running borderline yellow with no mad fish. KNO3 consistently tests out about 10ppm and PO4 at about .5 - 1.0 ppm any day of the week including day of partial. Any obvious problems with this schedule? Your criticism is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

At 4.7 watts per gallon, your plants are consuming 100% of those traces and are probably starving for more ...

The instructions on the bottle are more oriented towards low tech tanks ... nice safe generic recommendations ... in comparison, you are driving a trubo charged Ferrari with the gas pedal to the floor ... and your plants need the fuel! <grin>


Tom prefers the TMG ... I prefer the Flourish ... personally, I think that the Flourish performs better in tanks with harder water than TMG does ... I haven't seen anyone do any serious testing on the differences between hard water and softwater ... but I personally believe that the different chelators are processed either more easily or less easily in different water quality environments ...

Now I think Tom hinted once that it wasn't the hardness that I perceive it to be, but rather PH ... not sure about that <grin> ...

Since you have both ... then I would encourage you to use your own judgement and test both of them in your own aquarium ... and simply choose to use the one that you perceive to work best in your unique environment ...


Good ... EI recommends slightly higher levels than that... but it is a good start ...


That's the right track ....

Greg

P.S. Here are Tom's EI Recommendations ... they are for a 20 gallon tank, you have a 55 gallon tank ... so you will want to multiply them by approximately 2.75 times ...

A Typical Dosing Routine
1/4 teaspoon of KNO3 3-4x a week (every other day)
1/16th-1/32nd teaspoon of KH2PO4 3-4x a week (every other day)
Traces added on off days as the macro nutrients, so 3x a week, 5mls each time.
SeaChem Equilibrium 1/8 teaspoon after water change.

Thanks so much for your instruction Greg. You say that I should multiply the 20gallon example tanks dosing by 2.75. I presume this is because my 55 gallon is 2.75 times larger in capacity. I estimate approximately 10 gallons of my tanks volume is displaced by substrate and biomass. Should I take this into consideration when applying the example tank dosing to my tanks dosing? If so I would then need to adjust the example dosing by 2.25 correct? Should I make this increase in dosing all at once or incrementally over a few days time to give the plants time to adjust to higher uptake and avoid fueling an algae festival? Thanks again.