Inspiration and ideas for your planted aquarium.
tropica.com
100 ml Tropica Plant Growth Specialized to your 300L aquarium adds:
Element ppm/degree
N 4.46667
P 0.33333
Mg 1.30000
K 3.43333
S 3.03333
Fe 0.23000
Mn 0.13000
B 0.01333
Cu 0.02000
Mo 0.00667
Zn 0.00667
Cl 1.66667
most of the inspiration tanks are dosed by users themselves rather than what doses are recommended by Tropica themselves. again lets compare how this tank was dosed above, they targeted 4.46 N for weekly Dose, now lets take a look at Marchner Ratio adding the same amount of N, the K would be around 3 ppm, in case of Tropica it is 3.43 ppm K. same for Fe and Mn ratio which is close to 2:1
now all you have to do is compare the ppm being dosed by Higher dosing such as EI and then compare it with these numbers and you will find a huge gap in most of these elements. some being overly excessive and some under dosed. furthermore, EI uses KNO3 while Tropica is using Urea/NH4. EI tank dosed at almost 20 ppm NO3 (4.46 N) vs 4.46 N as Urea/Nh4 where tank dosed with Urea/Nh4 will grow plant many times faster, the end result is very little buildup with Tropica because Po4 will be fully exhausted, K will be almost fully used due to the higher N ratio, Fe and Mn and other traces are either fully used or some get oxidized or get precipitated. Tropica is smart enough to use higher N and smart enough to provide it in a way that the plant utilize it at much faster rate, faster the N uptake, the faster the other nutrients will be up taken, they kept the P low to make sure it render 0 quickly due to fast uptake of N. overall, the end result is very little to no nutrients left in the water column.
also, Tropica themselves have said that overdosing their fertilizer will cause algae, the tanks we are seeing in those pictures and free of algae.
what people missed from the Marchner ratio experiment is that even at higher dosing plant didn't get stunt, instead they grew very fast, the major difference was it used different ratio and different source of N vs EI, where EI used KNO3 and different ratio. where EI adds many times more nutrients while the other two system are no where close those numbers. K being one of the good example here.
the 3 ppm N weekly recommendation is based on my personal experience, this was designed to ensure you are growing plants without adding too much or too little, while at the same time keeping it lean, reducing water changes. I have no problem even if someone was adding 4 or 6 ppm N weekly, long as they were dosing similar to Tropica. if you were using Tropica and using 6 ppm N weekly, you will see less problems and less stunting due to the way its designed to work in term of ratio and type of N it uses, if you were to dose 6 ppm N from NO3, you will start to see problems in some plants immediately. this is where reducing the overall NO3 is helpful, same is true for K, you can dose 5,10,20 it doesn't matter to me, but some plant will start to show problems at some point. like I said this problem is also reduced if high K was combined with Urea/NH4. for EI users they might highly benefit if they were to dose the EI in half and dosed at smaller doses daily. I can understand that some users are still going to use KNO3 instead of Urea/NH4, long as they keep the overall NO3 low, they should see less problems.
far as starting my own journal, honestly I have no time for such experiment as life is too busy with family now. the tank still have that osmosote issue that I posted in another thread and I just left the tank alone to let it do its own thing. at some point maybe I will consider setting up the experiment again but during this time, there is no free time to do so. honestly, I don't think I need to repeat these experiment again because they have already been done before. many people here on this forum are already going to try this similar approach, some are already posting their results and sharing the outcomes, at this point we can observe their tanks.
once again, I have grown plants in multiple different methods, dosing, fertilizers and ratios. I can grow them in 3 or even 8 ppm N, but I decided to settle at 3 ppm N as I found it to be more beneficial and my main source of N is Urea/NH4, not NO3. I also try to maintain the ratio similar to Tropica or Marchner as mentioned before.
goal of this thread is to let the people explore different approaches and then they can decide for themselves weather they want to continue with the older approach or the new one. we have some members who actually went far as making their own fertilizer while some actually picked up a bottle of Tropica to test this approach, they will eventually report the results here on the forum. take a look at
#142 for example
am still trying to understand why EI wants to take credit for lean dosing when someone might be using Tropica? maybe I should call EI dosing the Hoagland solution when reduced into 10x dose so credit goes to the people who came up with The Hoagland solution.
At the end of day I wonder which fertilizing method is not EI.
... I am doing another large WC today. I received a bunch of (mostly root-less 
... Yes! Well, I still have one totally traditional EI dosed (with a few tweaks) tank, which is still running great btw.; zero-algae, excellent plant health etc. very low light, excellent flow throughout, rigorous maintenance and very, very stable water parameters! ... So heck yeah, that works too!
