Sorry if my post was kind of vague...LOL...i guess PPS-Pro wasn't a disaster, it just wasn't growing plants how I would like them to grow. Thank you for the quick response I really appreciate it. Some of the problems that I noticed in my tank was the consistent GDA and GSA. I had staghorn for a while, but I pruned and dosed excel, which killed the majority of it. I am just sick of the GSA primarily. I have pressurized CO2 which is being dispersed through at glass diffuser..I believe it is at 30 ppm...my dropchecker is yellow. I have heard through the grapevine that this system would work so I read about it and thought that I would give it a try. I have a rena xp1 on the tank so there is plenty of circulation and CO2 dispersion. Some of my rotala rotundifolia leaves kept going to a greenish/clear color and my blyxa hardly grows, as if it stunts. I have 48 watts of T5HO over the 20H. There is some info, if you can perhaps give some answers on the weird rotala syndrome that would be awesome. Again, thank you, and I hope this new dosing scheme works out for the best.

cheers,
sean

Do you have 4 dKH distilled or deionized water in the drop checker, and not tank or tap water? If so, then you may not have good enough water circulation - do all of the plants sway in the "breeze"?

Try dosing a lot of PO4, PPS does not suggest a lot of most things, but PO4 and Good CO2 ought to address most any GSA issue.
You need both in good shape, not just one.



Regards,
tom Barr

In EI generally used PO4:NO3 ratio from 1:5 to 1:10.
Here you say ~1:2.7.

Why? Is this misspelling or something?

The ratio of PO4 to NO3 is not important. It is having an adequate amount of each of them at all times that is important. When we see GSA many of us will double the amount of PO4 we dose, trying to get rid of the GSA, but we don't double the NO3 at the same time.

Naman,
Who says 1:2.7 P:N and where?

Tom Barr

Tom,
not P:N, but PO4:NO3 ratio.

You Did, over here.

60 grams KNO3 gives NO3~37.2.
18 grams KH2PO4 gives PO4~12.56.
So PO4:NO3~2.96 (depends on accuracy of calculations).

More over, for 20gal tank this gives NO3~42ppm. Isn’t it too much?

I guess Luis Moniz here had doubts too.



Help, please.

VaughnH,
I care of PO4:NO3 ratio because of a Redfield ratio and Rubisco.
More PO4 will not harm at all… until everything is ok with CO2. As soon as CO2 drops or liquid ferts under dosed plants have no enough N-pool for Rubisco to adapt for assimilation lower CO2 concentrations, and you have algae bloom much more and much faster, than when you have a more reasonable PO4:NO3 ratio, substrate loaded with nutrients, and less ferts in water column. This gives more Stability and easier Management, I guess.
Especially indicated problems evident with lean substrate.
Rich substrate (CEC+organics with low lability), together with “peak method” (see PJAN and Ole's data) allows dosing less nutrients in water column and better CO2 assimilation (due to better morning and all day Rubisco activation with gradually increasing light) makes ADA’s system quite different from EI/PPS-pro in terms of Stability and Management. This is ADA's "trick".
PO4 along is not a bad thing as we all here know well.
But here I have gone far off top…

Sorry, but I think it terms of N and P, not NO3 and PO4.
The ratio is about 4:1.

However, given some accuracy issues with scales etc, it can vary down to 3:1 to 5:1.

Let me take a look and think about this again.

1000 mls are in 1 liter.
That means 1000/12 mls 83.333 doses per 60 grams of KNO3.

We assume 1/4 teaspoon weighs 1.67 grams.
Thus that weight of KNO3(1.67 grams) added to a 20 gallon tank is 10-11ppm of NO3.

Convert your doses to per gram units:
83.33 dose/60 total grams = 1.4 grams per dose

Or about 7ppm, a bit rich, you could cut this in 1/2.
That's about 49ppm per week, so not too far off from 42 ppm.

Yep, thanks, I'll edit that and reduce it, no need.
I see what I did wrong too.
I assumed 3x a week dosing, not daily, so instead of 7x a week, I used 3x a week.
Which gives you a about 20 ppm a week dosing.

Thanks for catching that Naman.

Surprised no one caught it before.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Thanks Naman and Luis, I caught what I did a revised the schedule.
I assumed I was adding 3x a week, not 7x a week , even though my feeble brain was trying to suggest a daily routine

So when you use the 3/7 factor of .42, you end up with 0.8ppm of PO4 and 3 ppm of NO3 per day.

That's much more like it.
And if you like atomic ratios, then it reduces to about 1:5.7 N:P

I've changed the routine by simply reducing the volume dosed per day to 5 mls instead of 12, and 5 is typically what I use to dose a standard tank volume like the 20 gal.

Thanks for catching that.
Regards,

Tom Barr

Naman,

I took the suggestion and used the 10 gram suggestion for KH2PO4 vs 18 grams.

So the routine is 1 liter of DI water for the macro nutrients

60 grams of KNO3
10 Grams of KH2PO4
25 Grams of GH booster(or equivalent)

4-8mls per 20 gallon tank daily.
Low light tanks will need les,s higher light tanks will need more(based on a 1.5 w to 5 w/gal scale, fully planted with a fair number of faster growers).
Add 3 mls of Tropica Aquatic plant nutrition for the traces or 1/5 for lower light.

Check the ppm's, I'm busy at the moment doing some other things.


Regards,
Tom Barr