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Lean dosing pros and cons

Welcome @Sudipta - enjoyed reading your thread over at TPT before it got binned, and looking forward to the further data you'll add to the UKAPS hive mind with your journal.

I will confess up front to total selfishness in welcoming you - I'm running 3 low tech tanks at the moment, the most recent of which (journal to come, eventually) is just maturing. First cherry shrimp went in last weekend. It's room temperature (20-22 in the winter, 22-25 in the summer) currently 2/3 rainwater 1/3 tapwater which gets it down to 110 TDS.
I'm ambling gently towards the lean route (currently upped the K, dropped the NO3 and added a smidge of Urea) and will be using that tank as my test bed. This feels like an opportunity to maybe see if I can add an extra data point to the info pool. I'm more than happy to drop the TDS further (my rainwater tests at 12, so that's as low as I can go). My caveats are: (1) will Shrimp still be happy? (2) I can't do more than 20 L of rainwater in any given WC (tank is 70L), and (3) I can't guarantee 7 day WCs - sometimes they're 8 days, sometimes 9, sometimes 6. I unfortunately have this annoying 'rest of my life' thing that keeps getting in the way. Which is why I'm low tech; more forgiving. Would doing just rainwater, remineralizing with an appropriate amount of tap (330 TDS) water be a sufficient baseline to use for a meaningful experiment?

Cheers,
Simon
 
Sudipta said:
Hello Michael,
I am planning to start my own thread soon in this forum. I will add all the information to begin with and then try to answer all the questions. I am sure anyone should be able to replicate my methods.
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Hi Sudipta, I also suggest you start a journal as suggested by @Wookii which makes it more "yours" and less susceptible to tangential discussions. I am very eager to replicate your results and I cant wait to get started . The main issue for me right now is the winter here in MN... almost all my plants I got shipped in from a nursery in California (Aquarium Plant Factory), and it wont really work until we get up in 50'ties (two years ago around the same time I literally received frozen plants from them :) ... my fault of course!) .

Cheers,
Michael
 
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John q said:
Indeed. Here's all the gory details from the horses mouth. Taken from a post by Gregg, so already in the public domain. Read it and let's move on.

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Won't let me post the fb link, says post as been removed/privacy settings changed 🙄
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Thanks John for posting this... Well, that just sums up why I never felt compelled to join any other forum than UKAPS.
Cheers,
Michael
 
MichaelJ said:
What is particularly interesting to me about the TPT OP is the convincing timeline he provides - from June 2019 to Jan. 2022, some 2.5 years. without anything from the pictures that suggest he changed (re-planted) the tank several times over in that timeframe.
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Don't take me wrong, I don't think most people are biased with the purpose of being necessarily deceitful. It's just the nature of humans and why when we run trials, experiments etc in the scientific world we use protocols to prevent bias.
Anyway I am happy that @Sudipta and @GreggZ are now among us. That's a loss for PT.
 
Hanuman said:
Don't take me wrong, I don't think most people are biased with the purpose of being necessarily deceitful. It's just the nature of humans and why when we run trials, experiments etc in the scientific world we use protocols to prevent bias.
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Agreed. Well, its well known that even the Great Sir Isaac Newton was fudging his calculations to match observation even if he was generally correct (see S. Weinberg, To Explain the world, Harper 2015 among others) - so this is not new. As you say, it's human nature - there is never such thing as zero bias.

Cheers,
Michael
 
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plantnoobdude said:
nice! I'm planning to get some more crs after the ones I got before dropped one by one with super high EI tds and micros and co2. co2 is now at a much more reasonable level and I dose much less. still feel really guilty about the ones I killed due to my stupidity.... oh well, here's to hoping the next batch does better.
my tank is currently at 95ppm tds on tds500 scale.
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Hi @plantnoobdude 95 ppm TDS would generally be considered good for CRS - but, of course, it depends on what the TDS is made up from. They do need a fair amount of Ca in particular, but also Mg... From the water column or from food - preferably from the water column since the "exposure" from the water column is more consistent as they may not want to eat enough of the particular mineral source with Ca/Mg you feed them.
plantnoobdude said:
which leads to a question, does urea breakdown in water collumn? or inside the plant. or both? because if it breaks down in water, I am concerned about no2 spikes. but does no2 toxicity lower as ph lowers as well?
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(EDIT: I misread this one originally - I thought you wrote co2 ...) I do not know from experience... I have only a tiny bit of experience with urea in my tanks with fish-only and none with urea and shrimps. Nitrite is extremely toxic for shrimps as well... And yes, NO2 gets more toxic as pH changes but somewhat less so I believe, but either way you definitely do not want an NO2 spike in a tank with livestock!

Cheers,
Michael
 
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Hi all,
Welcome to @Sudipta and @GreggZ , hopefully we will prove to be slightly less hostile to "heterodox" views. Unfortunately I'd guess a certain amount of flack <"is inevitable">.

In terms of <"carbonate buffering and pH variation"> I think there is a some <"deliberate misinformation by the vendors of pH buffers">, partially because if <"pH stability"> isn't a "thing" in soft water then that <"particular revenue stream"> disappears.

When you add in the recent advances in <"scientific knowledge about nitrification"> the requirement of high carbonate hardness for the filter bacteria also disappears and with it goes another potential revenue stream.

I'm not a <"CO2 user">, but as soon as I realised that aquascapers were raising (and rapidly) lowering their pH by one unit every day, and <"had very healthy fish">, it becomes obvious that it isn't pH change itself that is damaging to fish and that acidosis and fish death are both symptoms of underlying issues, rather than the former causing the latter.

cheers Darrel
 
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Disclaimer: This post is not directed at any one person 😃

Learning is not a process you can finish. No matter who you are, no matter if its the aquarium hobby or something else.
If a person thinks they have got everything entirely figured out, their mind is closed and no learning will happen.

One can agree to disagree, I think this is important to remember.
There appears to be more than one way to grow plants, which explains why very different methods can achieve such great results.
A friendly tone and the shared desire for knowledge can form a bridge over quite large gaps.
The focus on this is (in my opinion) one of the things that makes UKAPS great 😄

Im very happy to welcome our new members, it is evident they hold a great deal of knowledge and I look forward to learning from them!
 
Sudipta said:
Thank you @Happi for the invitation.
Hello everyone,
My name is Sudipta Shaw and I am a brand new member of this society and the same person whose "non-CO2 supplemented tank thread" got deleted recently. I was quickly browsing here and noticed that there is some suspicion among the members about my results that I shared over TPT. So I thought it would be better if I introduce myself to all of you before going into the details sometime later.
I am originally from India and obtained my bachelors and masters degree in Microbiology over there. Then I came to the US and got my PhD in Biochemistry from Utah State University. I am currently working as a fulltime researcher at University of Minnesota. Although my planted tank journey only started in the summer of 2018 but I have been keeping fish and growing non-aquatic plants (primarily flowering plants and vegetables) since my childhood. I admire every aspect of nature and I am also passionate about wildlife photography.
You are more than welcome to check these links below if you want to know more about my passion for nature (primarily wildlife) and my scientific contributions in the form of publications. I am also attaching pictures of all 4 of my current non-CO2 supplemented tanks with similar parameters (largest and the oldest one is 20 gal tank, running since June 16, 2019 and that's the one I primarily presented at TPT). Couple of the plants in the last tank shown here are still under trial and I am not sure if they will survive long term in this environment. I did eventually post the pictures of other tanks in the comment section but unfortunately can't access them anymore. I also provided more details about algae in the comments which is also lost (yes I do get algae in my tanks but I have found that it is relatively easy to tackle them in my non-CO2 systems compared to an imbalanced pressurized CO2 injected tank, so yes I do have a high-tech tank). Although I briefly mentioned about importance of lower temperature (low 70F, 70-74F in my non-CO2 injected tanks but it is certainly possible to get good results at elevated temperatures of 80F or even slightly higher. However, It would require almost daily water changes (at least every other day in my opinion and yes I have done this in the past). It doesn't have to be very large water change, 15-25% water change every time should be good enough to maintain the health of plants. It is still quite a bit of work that's why I think it is better to keep the temperature in the lower range if possible. Please keep in mind that I am specifically talking about my non-CO2 setups (I think @MichaelJ has already shared the OP from the Google cache). I should also mention that I usually perform water change in all of my non-CO2 supplemented tanks during the light period, say 1-2 hours after the lights turn on (I forgot to mention this in the TPT post).
I am not saying that I can grow any plant in these systems or I know everything why I am able to grow many so called difficult plants in non-CO2 supplemented tanks but I am trying to the best of my knowledge to provide all the nitty-gritty details about my tanks which might help in the future for any hobbyist to replicate my results with more success.
Feel free to ask more questions and I will try my best to answer those.
Thanks,
Sudipta.

www.usu.edu

A Bird’s-Eye View - Discovery Spring 2018 - Science

Sometimes, timing is everything. Had the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) contacted Utah State University alum Sudipta Shaw (Biochemistry, PhD’17) just a little sooner, he might be following his passion for wildlife photography as a vocation rather than an avocation.
www.usu.edu www.usu.edu

scholar.google.com

Sudipta Shaw

Researcher 5, University of Minnesota - Cited by 702 - Biochemistry and Microbiology
scholar.google.com scholar.google.com

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I have been admiring your tanks on Facebook for some time, welcome and well done on such beautiful aquariums.
 
MichaelJ said:
Hi @plantnoobdude 95 ppm TDS would generally be considered good for CRS - but, of course, it depends on what the TDS is made up from. They do need a fair amount of Ca in particular, but also Mg... From the water column or from food - preferably from the water column since the "exposure" from the water column is more consistent as they may not want to eat enough of the particular mineral source with Ca/Mg you feed them.

(EDIT: I misread this one originally - I thought you wrote co2 ...) I do not know from experience... I have only a tiny bit of experience with urea in my tanks with fish-only and none with urea and shrimps. Nitrite is extremely toxic for shrimps as well... And yes, NO2 gets more toxic as pH changes but somewhat less so I believe, but either way you definitely do not want an NO2 spike in a tank with livestock!

Cheers,
Michael
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my calcium and magesium are at at 18ppm and 6ppm. gh is a bit north of 4, so i think it's good..
 
John q said:
Indeed. Here's all the gory details from the horses mouth. Taken from a post by Gregg, so already in the public domain. Read it and let's move on.

View attachment 183915
View attachment 183916

Won't let me post the fb link, says post as been removed/privacy settings changed 🙄
Click to expand...
Hello everyone.

I was reading this thread and wanted to thank those who have posted support.

As some might know I have kept a long running journal on TPT for many years. As I described in the post above I offered what I thought was good and sound advice to someone in direct response to their question. I have been having some long discussions with Tom Barr, Vin Kutty, Xiaozhuang Wong, Chantz Cramer, Raj Mahakul, Chris Hendy etc. and they all agreed that what I said was fact, not opinion.

I've known the moderator there (somewhatshocked) for many years and have communicated with him many times. When he sent me the warning I got into a heated discussion with him. Since we know each pretty well I thought I could speak freely in private. When I suggested he expand his horizons and take some time to learn more about soft water tanks he exploded.

I started getting some messages about me being banned, and wrote it about on a couple of FB groups. He got wind of it and became irate.

I am a moderator on a site and we moderate decorum, civility, etc. But we don't moderate opinion. In this case Jake (somewhatshocked) is the sole arbitrator of what is or is not allowed to be said, which is a shame for the TPT site and the planted tank community.

It saddens me that this happened at all. I have developed many relationships on TPT and have enjoyed my time there. I will say that the discussion in the FB groups did cheer me up quite a bit. There was some comedy gold in there.

I just got done downloading my thread with Httrack. One problem is that the pictures don't show up. Some do have links I can click on, but others don't. I do have all the pictures and the important thing is that I have a copy for posterity.

If anyone knows of a better method to archive a thread let me know.
 
Karmicnull said:
Welcome @Sudipta - enjoyed reading your thread over at TPT before it got binned, and looking forward to the further data you'll add to the UKAPS hive mind with your journal.

I will confess up front to total selfishness in welcoming you - I'm running 3 low tech tanks at the moment, the most recent of which (journal to come, eventually) is just maturing. First cherry shrimp went in last weekend. It's room temperature (20-22 in the winter, 22-25 in the summer) currently 2/3 rainwater 1/3 tapwater which gets it down to 110 TDS.
I'm ambling gently towards the lean route (currently upped the K, dropped the NO3 and added a smidge of Urea) and will be using that tank as my test bed. This feels like an opportunity to maybe see if I can add an extra data point to the info pool. I'm more than happy to drop the TDS further (my rainwater tests at 12, so that's as low as I can go). My caveats are: (1) will Shrimp still be happy? (2) I can't do more than 20 L of rainwater in any given WC (tank is 70L), and (3) I can't guarantee 7 day WCs - sometimes they're 8 days, sometimes 9, sometimes 6. I unfortunately have this annoying 'rest of my life' thing that keeps getting in the way. Which is why I'm low tech; more forgiving. Would doing just rainwater, remineralizing with an appropriate amount of tap (330 TDS) water be a sufficient baseline to use for a meaningful experiment?

Cheers,
Simon
Click to expand...
high tech doesn't always mean lots of water changes. I do water changes every two weeks and I believe Happi used to go a month or so between water changes and maintain low tds.
 
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