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good plant growth was Re: PO4



I was getting rampant green spot and other green types in my 30 gallon with 2
watts per gallon.  Tap has 0.5 ppm PO4.  I tried phosguard to no avail, then
Someone told me to call my water supplier and I did.  I had almost no potassium,
sulfate or magnesium in my water.  So I started adding PMDD.  1mL per 10 liters
of water, with incoming water.  The algae promptly died back.  For a long time I
didn't have algae, but the increased demand for other nutrients started causing
havoc.  I'm toward the end of figuring it out now.  Took about 3 mos.  It turns
out I had to add boron.  I made a solution of 2.2 grams of borax in 250 mls of
water.  I'm up to 3 mls of that per 10 liters and 3mls of PMDD per 10 liters.  I
only dose the change water.  When I reached the current levels that I'm using
now the apon bulb that I got at walmart literally exploded into growth, now it
has 3 surface leaf pads and two blooms.  The only other thing I add is Flourish
(this is the boron deficient variety) at about 1 mL a week.  Oh and I omit the
nitrate source from the pmdd, as I have plenty of that already. I also didn't
add the micronutrient mix to the PMDD either, its just the potassium and the
magnesium. One of which was a sulfate salt.  I'm also lucky that I don't have so
much phosphate that I need CO2.

Also I'm religous about weekly 10-20% water changes and gravel vacuuming.  I
think this keeps phosphate buildup to a minimum.  I know a guy on the same water
system as me who insists on not vacuuming the gravel and does a bare minimum
water change  every month or so.  He can't beat the hair algae back with a bush
hog.

Be careful though, I got lingering green water and some sickly hair algae
leftover from my phosphate and Iron dosing experiments.  Bad  idea that should
probably be left to CO2 injected tanks.

Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 08:10:36 -0700

> From: "David Berryman" <dberryman7479 at mediaone_net>
> Subject: good plant growth was Re: PO4
>
> How many thousands of different dificiencys are there out there?  When you
> find algae in your tank how long does it usually take you to find the
> dificiency....hours, days, or weeks?  Is there a specific group of test that
> you start with (ie. 2 or 3 first set of test then if that doesn't show
> anything go to 2 or 3 second set of test?).
>
> Dave Berryman
>