PH vs KH

[Gorillastomp]

And you know these are the right quantities for your tank how? I can tell you this would not work in my tank, plants would stunt by Wednesday if I front loaded this little over the weekend... They clearly do not work in your tank - I saw your plants...

Focus on the plants, not some arbitrary numbers...

I understand what you mean, the values i gave you are the cumulative i test in the water tank over severals weeks of dosing. In others words these are the balanced out values from dosing + water change or the residual value in the water. Not what i dose weekly.

I.e nitrates amount in water are ~28ppm daily

I undersantd test might not be 100% accurate on the numbers, but it means at least there is some residual, the plant should not missing out on anything.

If we talk about the same thing @palcente, what would be your suggestion? Increasing that residual value?

P.s i have already tested by front loading around the same value on sunday on the past and be only that as the dosing. By thursday my nitrates would be at 0.

 

[Gorillastomp]

I will post a picture later on the pogostemon stellata var. "Octopus" later today. I have a perfectly healthy shoots and the next to it started to stunt.

 

[Gorillastomp]

Healthy :

Stunted:

Stunted to new healthy side shoots :

these are all next to each other.

Extra ludwigia arcuata, i dont think the leaves should grow like that and you can see the rotala orange juice some tips are stunted

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Focus on the plants, not some arbitrary numbers...

Agreed, "the plants can't lie".

cheers Darrel

 

[dw1305]

H all,

I will post a picture later on the pogostemon stellata var. "Octopus" later today. I have a perfectly healthy shoots and the next to it started to stunt.

Interesting, shorter internodes and twisted leaves. It could be either a deficiency, or a toxicity, symptom - <"Diagnosing Nutrient Deficiencies (Manjula Nathan)">.

I understand what you mean, the values i gave you are the cumulative i test in the water tank over severals weeks of dosing. In others words these are the balanced out values from dosing + water change or the residual value in the water. Not what i dose weekly.
I.e nitrates amount in water are ~28ppm daily, I understand test might not be 100% accurate on the numbers

It was partially <"the difficulty"> in getting <"accurate and repeatable values"> for nitrate (NO3-) that led, separately, to the development of both <"Estimative and Duckweed Indices">.

cheers Darrel

 

[palcente]

Healthy :
View attachment 209480
Stunted:
View attachment 209481
Stunted to new healthy side shoots :
View attachment 209482
these are all next to each other.

Extra ludwigia arcuata, i dont think the leaves should grow like that and you can see the rotala orange juice some tips are stunted

View attachment 209483

Your plants look at least nitrogen starved (possibly P as well, hard to say; let's ignore they are stunted), pay attention how warm the colours are (reds are very red and green lean towards orange); look at mine for comparison. Do not get too fixated on Nitrogen though, you need to make sure you keep N : P ratio around 15:1 (pay attention again, it's not the same as NO3 : PO4 ratio - @Zeus. has an awesome calculator you can download here and work the numbers out - highly suggest you take advantage of it).

PS: Do I see a discus? Successful discus keeping is an art in itself, next to successful planted tanks... I have never tried myself, but I imagine you'd want to be an expert in both to marry them. See if you can make it work, but this is difficulty level high, just for the temperature alone.

 

[Gorillastomp]

Do I see a discus? Successful discus keeping is an art in itself, next to successful planted tanks...

Yes it's a discus tank. I have them for almost 2 years now(from 3 inch to now 6+ inch). They lay eggs and all but never had babies because they end up eating the eggs. They are in a community tank so i assume i would have to seperate them to succesful breed them i guess, but i have not much interest in that at the moment.

Heres a phot last March 11th when i tried the carpet route with echinodorus:

19 days later:

 

[Zeus.]

N : P ratio around 15:1 (pay attention again, it's not the same as NO3 : PO4 ratio

The IFC does give the [NO3],[N], [PO4] and [P] for each salt and the weekly totals if using various salts, so 'if' your after a certain ratio all the maths is done except the ratio part. As @palcente points out N : P ratios and NO3 : PO4 ratios valves for ratios values can be vastly different between elements and compounds so making sure you use the correct element of compound ratio is important if after a certain ratio

We only incorporated the 'ratio target' for remineralising agents for Ca:Mg for making DIY remineraliser's, as we felt the general consensus or evidence wasn't strong enough to support a 'golden ratios' for the other elements

 

[palcente]

Yes it's a discus tank. I have them for almost 2 years now(from 3 inch to now 6+ inch). They lay eggs and all but never had babies because they end up eating the eggs. They are in a community tank so i assume i would have to seperate them to succesful breed them i guess, but i have not much interest in that at the moment.

Heres a phot last March 11th when i tried the carpet route with echinodorus:
View attachment 209538
19 days later:
View attachment 209539

Oh yeah... You need waaaay more ferts... you could hide moby d1ck in that bush...

 

[MichaelJ]

as we felt the general consensus or evidence wasn't strong enough to support a 'golden ratios' for the other elements

I disagree, of course. As far as the science goes, start here: Marschner’s Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants.

I think there are enough of us around proudly wearing our tin foil hats to make "ratios" a worthwhile feature addition to the otherwise excellent IFC.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[MichaelJ]

Yes it's a discus tank.

Holy Cr@p! Thats some stunning Discus! Speaking of cr@p... your getting a ton of Nitrogen and Phosphorus from the waste produced by these guys!

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Zeus.]

I disagree, of course. As far as the science goes, start here: Marschner’s Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants.

I think there are enough of us around proudly wearing our tin foil hats to make "ratios" a worthwhile feature addition to the otherwise excellent IFC.

Cheers,
Michael

Easy enough to work out the the require NO3, PO4 and K ppm targets levels to get the N: P: K ratio which may suit folks need without all the work/time involved recoding the IFC.
I did do a version that gave the resultant N,P & K ratios. Think we dropped it as the IFC was getting more confusing esp for folk new to DIY ferts. So we applied the KISS princple in the end.

 

[Hanuman]

I think there are enough of us around proudly wearing our tin foil hats to make "ratios" a worthwhile feature addition to the otherwise excellent IFC.

I did do a version that gave the resultant N,P & K ratios. Think we dropped it as the IFC was getting more confusing esp for folk new to DIY ferts. So we applied the KISS princple in the end.

Indeed we did as it was further over complicating things and this ratio thingy would further stir people into some tunnel vision about ferts unnecessarily.
That some people are happy tweaking ferts like mad scientists with ratios of one element against another is one thing, and I can appreciate the effort, but this does not mean it's the best approach for the general population.

 

[_Maq_]

we felt the general consensus or evidence wasn't strong enough to support a 'golden ratios' for the other elements

Yes, "the general consensus" or "evidence" are not strong enough. I fully agree...

I think there are enough of us around proudly wearing our tin foil hats to make "ratios" a worthwhile feature addition to the otherwise excellent IFC.

... despite I too have spent a lot of time and effort to find out the best working ratios.

That some people are happy tweaking ferts like mad scientists with ratios of one element against another is one thing, and I can appreciate the effort, but this does not mean it's the best approach for the general population.

Again, I agree.
I think the problem is that Marschner provides reliable numbers which refer to nutrients taken up by the plants for a healthy growth. But to blend nutrients in a way that enables our plants to get these nutrients with the least effort/energy is definitely quite a different thing, and no immaculate solution is at hand.
That said, I believe I have arrived at certain recommendable guides, but nothing absolutely certain and smoothly working in all imaginable circumstances. As a result, I believe @Zeus. and @Hanuman chose a correct approach.

 

[Gorillastomp]

@palcente I did some calculation on my aio fertilizer and you might be right. I will do a trimming/cleaning, setup back up the rest(C02, ferts, light) later this week and test your theory. Sadly with this aio i can't get the 15:1 ratio like you suggested but i will increase dosing by a lot.

I was only adding around 4ppm N a week it might be a bit low.

 

[palcente]

@palcente I did some calculation on my aio fertilizer and you might be right. I will do a trimming/cleaning, setup back up the rest(C02, ferts, light) later this week and test your theory. Sadly with this aio i can't get the 15:1 ratio like you suggested but i will increase dosing by a lot.

I was only adding around 4ppm N a week it might be a bit low.

Look at raw salts if available in your country, it's way cheaper and it is not that difficult - you can just plug in what you use in the calculator.

 

[MichaelJ]

Yes, "the general consensus" or "evidence" are not strong enough. I fully agree...

but this does not mean it's the best approach for the general population.

Ca:Mg ratios are already "supported" in IFC and apparently supported by consensus and evidence... While easily calculated by hand, offering a column or a row that merely displays similar for the ratios of N P K Mg would be helpful and educational IMO - I am not suggesting that IFC should advice on certain ratios - a lot of specific tank parameters have to be taken into account to do so and this is where the wizardry enters... Even good ol' EI standard pretty much suggests ratios of 4:1:20 (N P K) (varies by source, but its about that range). Yes you can argue there are no general consensus or evidence to support any of these ratios, but everyone seems to follow ratios regardless and for good reasons. Also, If you are mixing dry salts, I would say you are already well into the intermediate territory as a hobbyist.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Hanuman]

Ca:Mg ratios are already "supported" in IFC and apparently supported by consensus and evidence...

True and that's because the Ca:Mg ratio (specifically the 3:1 ratio) is widely adopted and pose no debate. It is in fact a pretty common way of remineralizing water, hence why it's even built in the IFC calculator as a target in the Remin calculator only. For other element ratios, well that's a little different.

While easily calculated by hand, offering a column or a row that merely displays similar for the ratios of N P K Mg would be helpful and educational IMO -

For educational purposes, why not, but one could argue that there is no limit to education and we could then add a load of other information .
Calculating it is not an issue. It's pretty basic, but displaying the information is, despite what one might think. Making a decent user friendly GUI has probably been the most time consuming aspect of making the IFC Calculator with @Zeus. The calculator is already packed with a load of information, more than any aquarium fert calculator out there and in reality more than the majority of users need. We tried to find a compromise between advanced and beginner levels, but being the geeks that Zeus and I are, we pushed it a bit further.
If NPK ratios is something that most IFC users would like to see then it's something that Zeus and I could work on but I doubt most people are actually interested in this. They just want to grow plants.

Now I think I have stirred this thread away from its original subject so I'll leave it here. Any further discussion on the IFC Calculator should be discussed in the IFC thread.

 

[Happi]

@Gorillastomp you do not have to dose any N and P in your discus tank if you had been doing that. You only really need to dose small amount of Fe/Traces/K daily if possible or every other day. This will resolve some of the stunting issues by itself.

 

[Gorillastomp]

@Happi I have already tested the lean dosing in the tank and it was not working well, plant was not in great shape losing leaves etc. Well it was an overall lean dosing not only limiting N and P. Might be something to try out.

I think @palcente might have put the finger on it thought, after 1 weeks a half of heavier dosing i can see some promising changes. Rotala Maranda popping off and i can see the greener leaves in some plants. i don't want to make an early conclusion so i will keep this regime for a couple week.