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Easylife profito suitable?

D1gg3r

Member
Joined
9 Sep 2012
Messages
39
Hi, I'm planning a complete strip down and rescape of my old low tech tank and am going hi tech. I never really used ferts regularly in my old tank. I will probably opt for EI dosing eventually having read the excellent article on this forum but have a new bottle of profito and wonder if it'll suffice in the mean time.

The tank is a rio 240. I've upgraded the lighting from t8s to 2x 54w t5s with reflectors, will add CO2 injection and use a plant substrate. The plants I'm considering are some/all of the following:

Blyxa
Crypts (nevellii or wendtii)
Eleocharis parvulus
Mayaca fluviatilis 
Micranthemum micranthemoides
Hemianthus callitrichoides 
Staurogyne repens
Pogostemon erectus
Pogostemon helferi
Rotala rotundifloria

In short, after a bit of a ramble :oops: , will the profito suffice or will I have to add something else as well?

Many thanks
 
Easy Life Profito will suffice not only in the mean time, but for all times. You may need to add some extra KNO3 and PO4, depend on plants and fish load.
 
+1 on Aquadreams suggestion. Profito is a NPK fert. Dose appropriately for your tank. But with 240 litres and your plant choice, its gonna be expensive in long run. Another suggestion is to make EI doses, and add profito to supplement this until you settle on proper EI regime and dont feel pressure of right/wrong.

cheers
niru
 
It's hrad to say, if it will be sufficient because we don't know your water parameters. Maybe yes, maybe not. At least, I recomend you to buy NO3 a PO4 test kits (JBL if possible) and measure it. Try to keep your nitrate level 10-30 ppm and phosphate level 0,2-3 ppm and you'l be fine.
 
niru said:
+1 on Aquadreams suggestion. Profito is a NPK fert...
This is not true. According to Easylife Home Page Profito does not have Nitrogen or Phosphorous, and they seem to be proud of that fact. If the OP's tap water contains adequate levels of NO3/PO4 then this is OK, but if not then he could easily be in trouble.

gargamelcz said:
I recomend you to buy NO3 a PO4 test kits (JBL if possible) and measure it. Try to keep your nitrate level 10-30 ppm and phosphate level 0,2-3 ppm and you'l be fine.
Buying test kits would be the worst mistake the OP can make.

Cheers,
 
Test kits would not do much good. Sufficient fish load would normally provide enough N and P. There may be need for some extra K.
 
Thanks for the replies. It won't be stocked with fish initially until cycled as I'm going to run the filter from scratch, and keep my current fish stock in a holding tank.

I haven't tested my tap water where I currenty live, but only moved 8 miles so can't imagine it'll be that different. I've looked at our local water supplier which states the following:

14.84 dH

Copper 0.0 mg Cu/L

Iron 11.3 ug Fe/L

Manganese 1.0 ug Mn/L

Nickel 2.0 ug Ni/L

Nitrate 27.1 mg NO3/L
No measurements on phosphate given. It's a rural area so with runoff from fields the water carries quite high NO3 at times due to agricultural ferts- it's been upto 50 before. I'm guessing the phosphate levels will be of a similar level.

I will move to EI eventually so I can better control what goes into the tank (and cost :) ), I think easylife do a NPK additive as well, so may add this with the profito in the meantime?

I'm assuming that splitting the dose daily is best?
 
This is a quote fromt the Easy Life website about ProFito
Advantages ProFito
highly concentrated and complete universal fertilizer
all nutrients in one product makes the extra addition of iron or potassium almost always superfluous
for a strong, healthy and lush plant growth
promotes the formation of cytokinines and thus cell division
leaves grow wider, more intensive colour
improves the quality of the aquarium water
improves and maintains the biological balance in the aquarium
multiple stabilized
free of nitrates and phosphates very economical to use
promotes cell division

Note the ''Free of nitrates and phosphates''
You would definately need to add NPK. You can get a huge amount of dry salts for the price of one 500ml bottle of Profito.

MIKE
 
That's right. Tim hit the nail on the head. None of the Nitrogen test kits are capable of returning valid numbers. No one actually knows what is being measure by a PO4 test kit. Those kits return nonsensical values. Furthermore one never needs to worry about keeping the NO3/PO4 values within a certain range because these are non-toxic ions. Therefore it is a waste of time and energy for anyone to get hooked on using these kits.

More information in the thread Accuracy of test kits?

A typical example of how absurd an NO3 test kit readings can be in the thread ferts causing high nitrate!

I can guarantee you that using test kits cannot help you to grow plants.

Cheers,
 
Clive,

While you're on about test kits. I have a kinda related question. In the marine tank world PO4 testing is "quite important" and some reefers run posphate removers or reactors depending on if they need to add/remove it. They're very fussy about it and bang on about getting the levels just right. So the question is. Are the marine PO4 test kits different from the freshwater ones ie: are they more accurate/more reliable or are they still just as useless as freshwater ones (bearing in mind the salifert ones are really really expensive too !)
 
Hi all,
In the marine tank world PO4 testing is "quite important" and some reefers run posphate removers or reactors depending on if they need to add/remove it. They're very fussy about it and bang on about getting the levels just right. So the question is. Are the marine PO4 test kits different from the freshwater ones ie: are they more accurate/more reliable or are they still just as useless as freshwater ones (bearing in mind the salifert ones are really really expensive too !)
Depends upon the test kits, you can get semi-quantitative colormetric kits that will accurately measure PO4--- levels down to single figure values, but I would be dubious that they will give accurate levels below about 5ppm. Hanna do an electronic meter, the HI-83203-02 that might give you more accurate readings for about £400 + reagent costs.

What you have to remember is that the situation is different in reef aquaria, where marine "plants" (Green (Chlorophyta) and Brown algae (Phaeophyta)) are unwanted, and Red algae (Rhodophyta) may be desirable if they are coralline algae, but often undesirable if they are foliose forms. You also have a lot of symbiotic relationships where the zooxanthellae in Cnidaria are frequently diatoms etc. These organisms have evolved in very low phosphate environments and are very adapt at scavenging minute amounts from their environment, realistically an aquarium with "no PO4---" will always have enough phosphorus available for it to be non-limiting. You also have the issue that large scale water changes are more difficult in marine aquaria, mainly because of the cost and availability of salt water.

If we ignore test kits and work on the premise that we want to remove PO4--- all together, it becomes a lot easier, because the majority of phosphorus compounds (with calcium (Ca), iron (Fe) etc) are insoluble. Phosphate stripping, (using ferrous ammonium sulphate heptahydrate ((NH4)2Fe(SO4)2·6H2O) as a precipitant), is widely used in the waste water industry and is very effective removing about 95% of the phosphate, or you can use a FeOH3 based phosphate remover like "Ultiphos" or "Phosban" etc in a phosphate reactor. Because you can't really test when the "Ultiphos" etc. is exhausted (back to the test kit problem), the easiest option is to keep on replacing it on a regular basis well before it is all reacted.

I had quite a long discussion with the seller of "Ultiphos" on the BCA forum, it does get a bit chemistry orientated, but it covers this area in some detail. <http://www.britishcichlid.org.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=7161&hilit=iron+phosphate>

Personally I think most marine aquarists would be better of combining the reactor with an algal scrubber, or even better with a refugium with higher plants like Eel Grass Zostera and Red Mangrove Rhizophora mangle, but for a lot of them my suspicion is that it is the high tech. expensive "shiny toys" they like.

cheers Darrel
 
hrmp thats interesting (going off in a complete tangent now I guess)
At the moment my reef tank runs a refuge sump with cheto in one chamber with a wet/dry style wier over live rock to the final chamber with the return pumps. I recently had abit of a die off session and the PO4 issue was raised by the LFS he suggested I run rowaphos in the overflow chamber I assumed because I was using a refuge that the cheto would handle it all for me.
 
Hi all,
At the moment my reef tank runs a refuge sump with cheto in one chamber with a wet/dry style wier over live rock to the final chamber with the return pumps
I've never kept any marines, but that sounds a good system.
I recently had abit of a die off session and the PO4 issue was raised by the LFS he suggested I run rowaphos in the overflow chamber
Adding Rowaphos/Ultiphos as well certainly won't do any harm, and gives you "belt and braces", so really it is down to whether you can justify the extra cost.

cheers Darrel
 
ceg4048 said:
niru said:
+1 on Aquadreams suggestion. Profito is a NPK fert...
This is not true. According to Easylife Home Page Profito does not have Nitrogen or Phosphorous, and they seem to be proud of that fact. If the OP's tap water contains adequate levels of NO3/PO4 then this is OK, but if not then he could easily be in trouble.

Thanks Clive!! My mistake... I jumbled on this.. Used it once for micro ferts, and then got Easy life N & K ferts (which they sell separately). Mixed up on my reply..

cheers
niru
 
Just seen that Easylife do additional Nitro and fosfo products so i'll dose these with the profito first. I'll then move to EI once I've used it up as it seems by far the most flexible approach and cheaper too :thumbup:
 
Thank matey, much better idea than mine :lol: Any particular place best to get them? Probably worth getting everything including dosing bottles I guess.
 
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