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Need help working out an EI routine for my planted discus ta

nickmcmechan

Member
Joined
16 Mar 2008
Messages
224
Location
Dalkeith, Scotland
So the setup is

300 litre tanks
co2 injected
heavily planted
medium lighting, 2 x39W T8 for 8 hours + 2x39W for 2 hour sunburst
50 litre HMA water changed daily, 150l on a saturday
currently dosing TPN+

growth is currently good, get some pearling, no real issues, why am i changing? i believe that EI dosing with dry ferts will be cheaper than TPN+!

there's tons of info out there about EI an must admit i'm getting a bit lost

i've bought potassium nitrate, mono potassium phosphate and trace element mix from AE and will be making up solutions in 500ml bottles

i will be dosing macros and micros daily, so my questions are

(i) how many teaspoons of potassium nitrate, potassium phosphate and tracemix will i put in each 500ml bottle?

(ii) how many ml of each solution should i add to the tank each day?

thanks for any and all help that will be given here!
 
nickmcmechan said:
So the setup is

300 litre tanks
co2 injected
heavily planted
medium lighting, 2 x39W T8 for 8 hours + 2x39W for 2 hour sunburst
50 litre HMA water changed daily, 150l on a saturday
currently dosing TPN+

growth is currently good, get some pearling, no real issues, why am i changing? i believe that EI dosing with dry ferts will be cheaper than TPN+!

there's tons of info out there about EI an must admit i'm getting a bit lost

i've bought potassium nitrate, mono potassium phosphate and trace element mix from AE and will be making up solutions in 500ml bottles

i will be dosing macros and micros daily, so my questions are

(i) how many teaspoons of potassium nitrate, potassium phosphate and tracemix will i put in each 500ml bottle?

(ii) how many ml of each solution should i add to the tank each day?

thanks for any and all help that will be given here!

Nick
Please click the attached shortcut and this will tell you what you need to do to achieve E.I dosing.

http://www.ukaps.org/EI.htm

My mix is for 217 ltr so:

NPK – Solution

50 mls – 3 x per week

Saturday √

Monday √

Wednesday √

Mix is

KNO3 – 6.75 tps
KH2PO4 – 2.25 tps
MGSO4 – 18 tps
Water – 600 mls



TRACE – Solution

25 mls – 2 x per week

Sunday √

Tuesday √

Mix is

Trace Mix – 2.0 tps
Water – 200 mls

regards
paul.
 
Hi,
This is an 80G tank so it's to get 4X the dosing for the reference 20G.

The basic scheme doses:
7/8 tsp KNO3 3X per week or 3/8 tsp 7X per week.
1/4 tsp KH2PO4 3X per week or 1/8 tsp 7X per week.
1/4 tsp Trace 3X per week or 1/8 tsp 7X per week.

To make 500ml mixes just add (3/8 tsp KNO3) x 28 doses per month = 10.5 tsp KNO3.
To this same bottle just add (1/8 tsp KH2PO4) x 28 dose per month = 3 tsp KH2PO4.
The daily dose is simply 500ml/28 days = 18ml

The Trace mix is similar; 3 tsp trace to 500ml and dose 18ml per day.

The problem here of course is that only February has 28 days (and that only happens 75% of the time) so you'll run out before the end of most months. No big deal. The other is that the dosing value is 18ml instead of a nice round number like 20. I'd just dose the round number and simply make up a new mix sooner. :idea:

Cheers,
 
this seems to be working well, have noticed increase growth rate but a little bba, upping the co2 now

quick questions, using this on daily dosing should i still employ the rest day, day before the water change?
 
Hi Nick,
Well, daily means every day so I guess I'm not sure. If you wanted one day without dosing then all the calculations would be based on 6 days instead of 7, which is no big deal of course. You could just keep everything the same and simply not dose one day a week. See what happens after three weeks. If it's a discus tank you probably have a wider margin of error so you ought to be OK.

On the other hand that little nibble of BBA is telling you that you have a significant increase in plant mass which are now consuming more of everything. This could easily be a warning not to mess around. Adding more CO2 now means that NO3/PO4/Trace consumption will increase.

Cheers,
 
thanks again clive

the bba is getting significantly worse, guess i outght to quit the mucking about with co2 and just stick to a steady routine
 
Yeah, as biomass increases the tank is less forgiving. A couple of options here; If you are still doing the sunburst you could try cutting that out. As soon as there is an energy input increase, the CO2 demand skyrockets, the uptake attempt increases and the saturated levels drop. This short term instability could easily turn into a BBA trigger signal. You also could try injection rate increase. You could also try turning on the gas sooner (as well as turning it off sooner). Liquid carbon supplementation is also a good short term option here. Increasing the water change frequency/quantity, at least in the short term, will also help get rid of spores. You can also reduce the biomass by trimming - uprooting/topping/replanting tops.

Cheers,
 
I do EI daily 7 days a week.

I tend to do my water change either during the final hours of the photoperiod (my photoperiod is 3pm - 12am) after the CO2 has switched off in which case there will be enough left / already consumed during the day. Or I will do the water change in the morning pre photoperiod.

I just dose the same every day either an hour or 2 before lights on or if I am working then I do it before I go to work.

So for me there is no rest day. If I am away for a day or 2 I just dose 2x or 3x to allow for the non dosing days.

AC
 
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