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Eheim automatic fertiliser dosing device
I think a couple of people have asked about the Eheim fertiliser dosing
device, but so far I haven't seen any comments.
I went to my LFS this morning and they showed me the device, having just
received one only as a demo to drum up orders for delivery in 2-4 weeks
(distribution to Australia takes longer than to the rest of the world, it
seems). So we set it up and played with it.
It uses the same motor and timer mechanism as the automatic feeder. The
fertiliser reservoir seems to hold around 50 - 60 ml of fertiliser, but
the instructions don't say how much it holds or what the dose volume is.
The volume of a dose is fixed and, at a rough guess, is around .7 ml - we
filled it with water and I hit the manual dose button until I had
extremely close to 5 ml of water in a test vial - 7 doses. You can set it
to deliver 1 or 2 doses up to 4 times daily, and you can vary the dose
between 1 and 2 doses for each time. That allows roughly between .7 ml
daily (1 dose once daily) and 5.6 ml daily (2 doses four times a day) in
.7 ml increments.
For my 120 litre tank using a custom made fertiliser based on the Tropica
Mastergrow formula (can't buy Mastergrow in Australia to my knowledge) at
10 ml per 100 litres weekly, I would go close to perfect dosing at 2
doses a day (either 1 dose twice daily or 2 doses once daily). Of course
they say only to use their fertiliser which seems to be dosed at the same
rate as Mastergrow. You could play around with dosing by diluting your
fertiliser if you can't get a close match.
They couldn't give me a price at this stage but expect it to be the same
as the fish feeder - around $100 Australian. It looks as well made as any
Eheim product and seems to work simply.
It looked like it would meet my needs so I ordered one and I'm happy to
report further once I get it and have had it running for some weeks if
anyone is interested.
Does anyone know when the best time to dose fertilier is? Is it
preferable to dose at night or during the day, and is it best to do one
large dose daily or a number of smaller ones? Devices like this raise
such questions.
David Aiken