First, everything is going to work and you are compensating in some way to make it work (and the compensation is how long you have until you have to pay more attention or overall aquarium health).
Here is my current thinking to yield highest probability of success.
Substrate: as rich as you can get! Garden soil - doped with slow release pellets - capped with aqua soil (to help with anchoring/planting and so when you uproot it’s “clean”). Make sure iron and micros are in there.
Lights: buy one with good spectrum + intensity — 100% from the get go 10h.
Temp: set it and forget it (swings if you want) - 23-26 celcius is good.
Filtration: classic recommendation 10x over, some sponges, minimal “media” … just a flow maker.
Flow/distribution: there isn’t an optimal pattern - depends on dimensions of tank. Low velocity, high turnover is the key.
Surface agitation/gas exchange: you need it. Doesn’t matter how you do it but it needs to be done.
Surface: should be clean to promote gas exchange… skimmer or weir probably a good idea.
Water change: daily at start up for a month until cycled, then ease off to every 2 days, then 3, … until desired frequency for tank + utilize: daily and ween when you root tab, or issues occurs etc
I think that’s everything right? Haha joking the most controversial to follow.
Ferts and co2 and water:
You need to start somewhere: tap water will dictate.
Macronutrients:
Nitrate, kh, GH, phosphate tend to be loosely linked in tap water. Kh and GH much more tightly linked. GH tends to be majority Ca.
So, we use Ca to begin the process.
Get Ca to mg at ~ 3:1. 150 Ca, get Mg to 50. Stick K in the middle for the ~ 3:2:1 Ca:Mg:K … 100 should do the trick.
Now, if your tap is 150 Ca, I mean good luck: your KH is high (making plant selection trickier and CO2 application more challenging) and this kind of GH really narrows fish selection ... --- probably better off going rain water + remineralizing with tap and salts or RO and remineralizing.
In any case, use Ca to dictate NO3 at ~ 5:1. So in this example, 30NO3 ... or EI. With 30 Ca, we go 6 NO3 .... with 15 Ca, we go 3 NO3 ... and I hope you start to see a trend here. Use NO3 to dictate PO4 at 2:1 .... so 30NO3, 15 PO4 and so on.
The trend is this: ADA dosing extremely lean NO3 ... tap water in Japan? Everyone in UK uses EI ... tap water in UK? EI works for half of the US ... tap water in the US ... Dennis Wong APT takes over the US and Canada ... tap water is closer to soft/moderate hard. And when his ferts don't work, the suggestion is to try the leaner version lol.
The Dutch never use their tap water lol ... they remineralize RO. Like I mentioned before Ca 30 under this schema is pretty safe for a reminalizeration target. Then you can pull of NO3 (and PO4) if you want to make the plant more petite.
All of the macros front loaded at water change. Can do partial dosage daily or periodically afterwards, if needed.
That covers Macro nutrients.
Micronutrients: any mix will do, concentrated solution if it's meant to be dosed in large batches, or roll your own at desired ratios. Iron proxy ~ .015 ppm daily. Go ahead and play with chelates EDDHA, DTPA, Gluconate, EDTA ... again a reason that a lot of US "prefer" DTPA ... and the other "a lot of US" prefer EDTA --- hardness of tap water. Us Canadians, we are just confused. Can always just dose more of EDTA ... be aware of compensating for performance with other things. Dosed daily ~ around lights on.
KH and CO2: If you have KH < 5-6 ish, you can probably get away with CO2 with lights given you have ample agitation. Probably safer to go 30 min before lights on just so no one gives you flack on your advice to them. Anything more, you need ramp up to about 2-3hours, if you go any more than this, you need to look at system efficiency. If you have lights at 100, your system will be efficient enough so you won't need more than 2-3 hours. Also, if you lights force a small ramp (such as mine and you put 30 minutes), then you definitely won't need any more time. And higher KH affects CO2 acquisition for the plant so you begin to narrow plant choices to more harder water varieties - especially if you want livestock.
The plants dance the prettiest when the pH is higher in the tail end of the photoperiod, but I think this is more of a finesse rather than a "grow pretty plants".
Soft water: co2 with lights - simply unneccesary to go before, especially under this schema.
Magic ppm for CO2: pH no lower than 5.5ish seems to be sound advice: and you don’t need to get there until about 30 min-45min into the photoperiod, depending … might be 46 minutes lol … it needs to be “on its way to peak” at lights on and soft water users are always on the way to peak due to low KH and carbonate equilibrium with co2.
Look at soft water users drop checkers ... most of them land around 6 pH. Hard water users simply don't have to worry about going this far ... you'll gas the tank before you get to that point. Free CO2 in the water column as a requirement is unique to the plant - standard drop checker advice is good I'd say for peak drop (noting all the issues with drop checkers and also with pH measurements). Using pH + Drop Checker within this schema - bingo.
I think thats it
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Any feedback on it?