RE: [APD] re water changes

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

Nick's hitting the nailhead.

If NO3 is steadily accumulating, then water changes or
lesser doses of NO3, or a combination of the two, can
result in desireable levels and avoidance of excesses. With
lots of plants, including "fast-growers" and few fish,
dosing might be useful even if you are not doing frequent
water changes or adding CO2 and have only moderate amounts
of lighting.

Either watching the plants or testing are pretty much the
only ways to know how things are working out, but you can
adjust the dosing to suit your particular tank and hobby
habits.

With dirt under the gravel, you might skip dosing
altogether but these tanks sometimes tend to give way to a
single dominant plant or two and can be messy if you like
to rearrange/transplant.

As said on APD recently fish food/poop can be an adequate
source for NO3 but might even have adequate PO4, depending
on the food. Adding traces is usually a good idea.

The less often you do water changes, the more carfeul you
must be about dosing and feeding. The big advantage of
waterchanges is that one can use the water changes to
easily ensure against excesses.

sh

--- "Wise, Nicholas" <Nicholas_Wise at lgeenergy.com> wrote:
. . . I started adding KN03, but after 
> > testing found that was a no-no. In my tank it builds up
> > on it's own and 
> > water changes are necessary in two weeks to keep the
> > levels sane. I've 
> > got relatively low light however, so that is likely it.
> 
> It seems that maybe you are mixing two different methods.
>  You are
> adding KNO3 3x a week, yet not wanting to do water
> changes?  Dosing
> nutrients at relatively high levels should be accompanied
> by WEEKLY
> water changes.  If you only want to do changes every 2-3
> weeks, try
> adding small amounts of KNO3 once a week.
> 
> -Nick
> 
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> 


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