Re: [APD] About EI Dosing

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

If you add substantial amounts of food (gold fish? you bet), then you have to adjust the dosing for the amount of NO3 or PO4 that the fish food adds. 50% water changes will keep the chems for going over a max level but the amount of chems (including those added with fish food) determines what the max level is.
 
Testing is one way to decide what you need. Watching the results is another. Don't rely too much on the inexpensive test kits; the margin of error is rather wide -- especially when measuring something as small as a few ppm. If you have probs with algae, clean the tank as best you can and back off some on the dosing and see if things improve. If you are feeding little, then underdosing could be the issue and you might want to try dosing more ferts and see if things improve.
 
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----- Original Message ----
From: Saugata Banerjee <saugatab at gmail_com>
To: aquatic-plants at actwin_com
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2006 10:59:47 PM
Subject: [APD] About EI Dosing


Hi All,

Sometime back I had started EI dosing in my 20 G planted tank. My tank
specifications are as follows:-

1. Size-20G (Actual water volume-18G)
2. Light - 108 watts of Philips PLL lights @ 12 hrs/day
3. pH- 6.5
4. CO2- Pressurised @ 3 bubbles/sec diffused through the filter
5. Filter - Eheim Professional 2224
6. Ferts (Macro) - Dosing 5 mls of KNO3 (stock sol. of 250 mls with 6
teaspoons of KNO3) & 1 mls of KH2PO4 (stock sol. of 250 mls with 3 teaspoons
of KH2PO4) on every alternate days.
7. Ferts (Micro) - Trace Elements (with Iron) - 1/2 ml once every two days
8. KH - 5
9. Fauna - 2 medium size orandas
10. Water Change: 50% every week
11. Flora: Java Fern, Anubias Nana, Anubias Afzeli, Amazon Sword, Nuphur
Japonica, Lily, Echinodorous osiris, Baby Tears, Vallesneria, Ludwigia etc.
12. Substrate - 3 inches of Calcium free sand with 2 mugs of laterite as the
bottom-most layer
After about 15 days of dosing I had major trouble in the form of diatom
algae & hair algae outbreak. The plants also stopped growing and the overall
balance seemed to have gone for a toss.

Subsequently, I got hold of Nitrate & Phosphate Test Kits manufactured by
Aquarium Pharmaceuticals and was amazed to find the Nitrate & Phosphate
levels. Nitrate was 120 PPM & Phosphate was 20 PPM.

Immediately did a 90% water change and stopped dosing completely. Have not
dosed anything for the past 10 days and the Nitrate & Phosphate levels have
come down to more acceptable levels. Nitrate is between 5 to 10 PPM although
Phosphate is still high at about 1 to 2 PPM. Am doing 50% water change once
every 3 days and keeping a tab on the Nitrate & Phosphate levels.

And yes I did test my tap water and there are no traces of Nitrate &
Phosphate.

Has somebody else too experienced such results with EI?
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