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Spezial N - Nitrogen Fertilizer

Tobi said:
Hi,

10 ml should be quite enough for that tank volume. I would keep it that way and observe.
3 days is a short timeframe. I would not expect to see a tremendous change in 3 days.


Best regards
Tobi
Click to expand...

Tobi, if folks see no growth in 3 days etc, this tends to be CO2.......not the ferts.......many blame the ferts when it's a CO2, flow, trimming etc issue.
 
Hi Tom,

yep you are right. CO2 is the first thing to check and adjust.

Best regards
Tobi
 
plantbrain said:
Tobi said:
Hi,

10 ml should be quite enough for that tank volume. I would keep it that way and observe.
3 days is a short timeframe. I would not expect to see a tremendous change in 3 days.


Best regards
Tobi
Click to expand...

Tobi, if folks see no growth in 3 days etc, this tends to be CO2.......not the ferts.......many blame the ferts when it's a CO2, flow, trimming etc issue.
Click to expand...

last time i listened to you i ended up killing my fish with overdose of co2. even at that time plant did not show much improvement.
 
Happi said:
plantbrain said:
Tobi said:
Hi,

10 ml should be quite enough for that tank volume. I would keep it that way and observe.
3 days is a short timeframe. I would not expect to see a tremendous change in 3 days.


Best regards
Tobi
Click to expand...

Tobi, if folks see no growth in 3 days etc, this tends to be CO2.......not the ferts.......many blame the ferts when it's a CO2, flow, trimming etc issue.
Click to expand...

last time i listened to you i ended up killing my fish with overdose of co2. even at that time plant did not show much improvement.
Click to expand...
Listen may be, but did not hear. Looked at but did not see.
Your fish could not have died because you listen to Tom(plantbrain), but just the opposite. You did not listen.
When word comes about aquatics you have to pay attention to many aspects without taking out of context any particular parameter.
Aquatic system is a set of parameters that are interconnected and influenced by one another.
 
I can't help but to post in this thread :D

What a good read!

Tobi, its great that you would share you own recipes thanks.

I don't think that there will ever be a "one works for all" fert, there are too many paramaters that chenge from one tank to another.

As for Spezial N, people who use it say how much extra growth they have seen and how much more greener it is. For me this is the Mg content and NH4NO3.

Why?

NH4NO3 makes things grow and grow fast.
Mg makes things green.

This product/recipe works because it replaces nutrients that people are lacking.
Great work :D
 
Me Again!

This thread got me thinking! I have been dosing EI as per instructions from Barr Report and been doing so for 3 years. Therefore i have not done much testing of my water parameters.

I do not suffer from algae and have good growth. :eek:

But Tobi and Clive you may be interested in my results for N,P,K just before a 50% weekly water change:

N03-N = 16ppm

P2o5 = 2ppm

K2O = 99ppm

"food" for thought chaps!
 
Hi,

have you read the recipe at all? ;).

There is NO, absolutely NO NH4NO3 in the recipe.

A little bit Urea is in the mix, but the mix works without the Urea too.... but believe me. If you dose just NH4NO3 or Urea you will not get the same results.

Best regards
Tobi
 
Hi all,
Sorry Tobi, I did know that, and I should have referred to nitrogenous fertilizers more widely.

Urea (CO(NH2)2) will have the same greening effect on terrestrial plants, but is much less toxic than ammonia (this is why terrestrial animals excrete it or uric acid (C5H4N4O3) rather than NH3), and won't cause leaf burn.

In terms of NPK, urea has more nitrogen (46.7-0-0) even than NH3NO3 (35.4:0:0). I say in the linked thread
You have more options with emersed plants with regards to the combinations of fertilisers you can use, and whilst ammonium nitrate (NH3NO3) is likely to cause leaf scorch, urea (as an N source) or other low conductivity feeds wont.
Click to expand...
A little bit Urea is in the mix, but the mix works without the Urea too.... but believe me. If you dose just NH4NO3 or Urea you will not get the same results.
Click to expand...
I'm still not convinced by this. I am convinced that "Spezial N" is a good formulation, but I'm not convinced that the same combination of ions from a different source wont give the same response.

If you want to look at the actual pathway which leads to a plant available nitrogen ion from urea, it is by microbes (that possess the urease enzyme), which catalyze the conversion of CO(NH2)2 to 2NH3 & CO2.

Although urea is usually present at ambient concentrations below 1 µM-N, it can contribute 50% or more of the total N used by planktonic communities. Urea may be produced intracellularly via purine catabolism and/or the urea cycle. In many bacteria and eukaryotes, urea in the cell can be broken down by urease into NH4+ and CO2.
Click to expand...
From the "Role of urea in microbial metabolism in aquatic systems: a biochemical and molecular review", open source and available from <http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/ame/v59/n1/p67-88/>

This is well worth a read.

cheers Darrel
 
Happi said:
you sound just like Tom
Click to expand...

I know Tom Barr and he's always wrong. :lol:
At least I think so

Much like EI, adding stuff that is lacking in large amounts in tap or of the fert routine often has large impacts.
This is provided you have good light/CO2 etc to begin with.

GH booster is not that common from what I've seen in most of EU.

Adding more Ca/Mg has never done any harm and has colored up more than a few folks tanks.
Adding a bit of NH4 is fine, regardless of the form, as long as you are not dosing more than say 0.6-0.8ppm per day......and for lower light/slower growth tanks, this might run at 0.2ppm or so. Tank should easily consume this, or simply feed fish and have good stocking levels.

While you can go with GH booster...or add it along with Ca and Mg cations.......and NO3.........I do not see any difference personally. I left out the NH4, I have that in the soil(ADA AS) and in the fish loading. I've used it for 2 weeks now.
 
Hi Tobias,
Just ordered a special n type mix without urea and added KH2PO4 to try out (George Farmer uses one).
I live in a softwater area and i may suffer an Mg and Ca deficiency. Im currently using TPN+ and adding 15ml per day and also adding K and Mg and Ca salts.
Tobi said:
Hi,

as explained before... Spezial N is ONLY a nitrogen fertilizer. You need to add everything else (PO4, trace elements etc.). The Ca and Mg amounts in this fert are not enough to supply your plants.
I would not add additional potassium or only if you see a deficiency.

Best regards
Tobias
Click to expand...

newbie question, but if the Ca and Mg amounts arnt enough to supply the plants why are they there, or why arnt enough added to supply the plants? Im presuming i should continue to add my sera mineral salts alongside the special n type mix to ensure any deficiency is covered?

Also, i have a mature set up, heavily planted. Your initial dosage suggests 1ml/50l aquarium water daily, do you think given my current dosage of TPN+ and the plant mass id be ok doubling or even trebling your recommended dosage?
This is the tank:
feb20122499.jpg

Thanks,
Ady.
 
If.......it is ONLY a Nitrogen fert, then it's ONLY just that...........NO3 and/or NH4.

Bringing in various K+, Ca, Mg .....more/less etc.........should not matter if those are added from other sources and are non limiting. Those need addressed isolated and individually per each user.and each user/tank, tap water type can vary widely. If it is only about nitrogen, then it should not matter which source is it is from, KNO3 or Ca(NO3)2 etc.......

You cannot say that KNO3 is not as good as special N and also say that it is only a nitrogen fertilizer.
We(SFBAAPS) added SeaChem equilibrium to our soft tap water decades ago and saw dramatic improvement. Had little to do with nitrogen. Folks made DIY GH booster to address this. Not all tap water will need it, but most can see some improvement.

No one has shown, as far as I know.........that excess GH booster does harm. I've added a lot to my 120 Gal tank without any influence on growth.

ADA AS has NH4 and I feed the fish about 2 grams of dry weight food at roughly 40% N. This is about 0.8 as N, assuming 10% is retained by the growth of the animals , bacteria etc, this is reduced to about 0.6ppm of NH4 per day.

This is a rough estimation of the NH4, some of it gets converted to NO3, some goes to the plants, some is exported as water changes etc.

This number can also vary widely tank to tank.
 
Not sure i follow what your saying Tom... sorry.
I get that its just a nitrogen fertiliser, but why does it have any Mg and Ca in it if its effectively useless (as far as the plants demands are concerned)... or is there another reason for it being there?
I think the confusion may lie in the fact that i failed to mention also that ive ordered a CSM+B micro mix ferts mix also to accompany the special n type macro mix.
I initially wanted a fert with Mg and Ca in to remedy a possible shortfall in my tap water to help as a possible remedy for repeated minor crypt melt.... most likely more to do with c02 as it happens, but thought there would be no harm in putting it in for peace of mind.
Cheerio,
Ady.
 
Or is it that ive totally missed the point as i dont know much about compounds and the Mg and Ca are in fact in the form of magnesium nitrate and calcium nitrate which are there more for nitrate fertilisation than either the Magnesium or Calcium benefits? :oops:
I may be over complicating things in my head, i had considered a straightforward EI dosing regime, but thought id give this a go. Basically all i need to know is, if im wanting to ensure no shortfalls, what else except the Special n macro mix with potassium nitrate, and micro trace mix do i need? Or do i need nothing else and should just start dosing and see how i go? :?
Thanks,
Ady.
 
Well, if....what Toby is saying above is true...then the Ca/Mg are not the factors, rather the NO3 is.

If you add Ca(NO3)2 to water of KNO3, they both completely disassociate, in otherwords, the base salt will not matter, the NO3 is still the NO3 no matter what.

Now some might argue adding NH4 is the cat's meow...........I'm more likely to agree with that, or the aquarist's prior dosing did not include say enough Mg......but adding MgSO4 to the trace mix is a common solution to that.
Then it isolates down to NO3 vs NH4. And folks have added one or the other with variable results for a long time.
I could see there being something to NH4 vs NO3, however, this is small in terms of aquatic weeds.

I have never, even with our insanely soft GH and KH's in this area, a Ca decidency in any aquarist tank.
I've seen Mg often. In Lake Tahoe, never seen it either, these are pure alpine lakes and they have ample nutrients for lush plant growth.

You could do it I suppose under controlled conditions, but the tap and other sources are likely too high for this to be a limiting factor. Maybe if you never do water changes and dose and try and balance everything, then it could happen.

I've used

KNO3
KH2PO4
CMS+B and I might add a little MgSO4 to this
DTPA Fe to the CMS at 1: 3 ratio by volume
Then a GH booster, this tends to be 2: K2SO4: 1 part CaSO4, 1 part MgSO4.

I dissolve the trace mix CMS+B, DTPA Fe and the MgSO4 together in warm soft tap water. I dose this as a liquid.
The rest I dose as dry powder.

I cannot confirm that special N improves my growth.
2 weeks should be long enough. We use Ca(NO3)2 and Mg(NO3)2 for reef and planted marine tanks, so I had it on hand. I did not use the urea. But I have dosed NH4NNO3, NH4Cl, and urea in the past. Adding about 0.8ppm per day should meet the N demands for most any planted tank without much limitation. 3-4ppm for NO3 etc.

I add about 30 ppm a week for NO3.
About 3-4ppm of NH4 waste from fish.
I have excellent growth rates, color and form. This did not change subing the Special N, so it's not bad, but it did not do anything positive either. Since it adds some more N and Mg relative to other nutrients, this may help some folks, while doing no harm to most everyone else.

Dosing just one at a time, or specific groups might teach you more however about a particular tank or plant.
Many do not care, they dose whatever they dose that works..........same with EI, they might need only 1/4 th EI..but they keep dosing 4x as much. Others might need the full amount, if you do not try, you do not know.

Might get some folks on the right track either way though.
 
Hi all,
If you add Ca(NO3)2 to water..... they both completely disassociate, in other words, the base salt will not matter, the NO3 is still the NO3 no matter what.
Click to expand...
&
I have never, even with our insanely soft GH and KH's in this area, a Ca deficiency in any aquarist tank. I've seen Mg often.
Click to expand...
I'd agree with Tom on this one, I've just re-read the thread and I think you have to split it into three components.

The first question is "is Tobi's Spezial N a good fertiliser mix?, and the answer to this seems to be unequivocally that it is very successful fertiliser mix.

The second question is a bit more complicated, and really has 2 parts, the first is are high levels of potassium (K) a problem? and the second is is the unbalanced nature of the addition of K and NO3, from KNO3, (14N:39K) a problem? Tobi is convinced that this is true, he wrote this earlier in the thread:
If K+ gets much higher than NO3 you can (you do not need to) get problems. If it's the K+ itself or something else interfering with. I really do not care and could of course be some correlation. Botanists and plant experts from Germany (and I know quite some, all have the same idea regarding K+ and NO3). If K+ gets way higher than NO3 it could lead to problems. Maybe you guys should get K+ test kits to get an idea how much K+ you have in your tanks.
Click to expand...
Clive and Tom think that it is a red herring and nothing to do with the NO3:K ion ratio, and that high K+ levels aren't a problem. I think Tom and Clive are probably right, but I'm not totally discounting some effect. I wrote:
I'm not quite as sceptical as Clive, and I am really interested in your "magic mix", I don't think that it is impossible that there might be some synergistic effect of the varied nitrogen sources, although I'd need to be convinced. But I still can't quite see why the K+ ions should build up to very high levels, they are entirely soluble so there isn't any buffering effect. Even if you have a substrate with a very high CEC, K+ ions will be preferentially exchanged for nearly all other cations: Multivalent ions on the right displace the monovalent ions to the left: +>Al+++>Ca++>Mg++>K+>NH4+>Na+>Li+) I can't see why the 50% EI water change doesn't keep removing 1/2 of any excess, add this to "luxury absorption" by the plants and surely it must take a very long time for K levels to build up?
Click to expand...
So I think the jury is still out on this one, although all the scientific evidence we have tends to point towards both high K+ levels not being a problem, and them being fairly unlikely to occur even if you use KNO3 as your potassium and nitrogen source.

The last 2 questions are conjoined in some ways, and are does it matter which compounds you use to achieve the levels of NO3-, K+ etc that you want? and is the obvious the success of Tobi's "Spezial N" down to increased levels of NH4+, Mg2+ etc? Again Tobi believes that the chemical compounds used are important, and that the results are not purely to do with increased nutrient levels. I'm moderately convinced that Tobi is wrong and that the source of an NO3- ion is irrelevant, but I do think that the enhanced magnesium (Mg) levels, the urea addition and possibly the low Mg:Ca ratio may be reasons for the undoubted success of "Spezial N".

cheers Darrel
 
From my personal experience I am convinced that Tobi is not wrong in his believe that source compounds do matter.
Example.
The best and most concentrated and pure source of NO3 is HNO3. I used it a while ago in my tanks. Problem with this method is that it ends up with constant increase of GH and KH levels that comes as a direct result of HNO3 reacing with substrate particles, wood etc. more specifically the H+ from the acid.
Another example.
As a K+ source I have tried ADA Brighty K that is K2CO3, then I tried KCl, also I have tried K2SO4. They all work with possibly small side effects if overdosed, but nothing to worry about.
Growth in my tanks was always good with those salts. However the K2CO3 do tend to boost up the KH after long periods of use. KCl would top up too much Cl that is not so important element as other chemical elements. K2 SO4 will top up too much Sulphur in the form of SO4 that can precipitate other cations into inaccessible for the plants salts.
Needless to say too much Sulphur in aquatic environment could lead to acidification of the sediments.
So I was scratching my head what to do about those.
I decided to mix the 3 compounds in one solution as the ratios by weight are as follows.
K2CO3 25%, K2SO4 37.5%, KCl 37.5%.
The whole idea was to minimise the excess build up of any chemical element while supplying K+.
I made the solution and went on the road to Germany for 10 days. I instructed my wife to inject all ferts in the tank every day as every fret bottle was with a label stating how many pumps to squirt into the tank per day. Pretty simple.
You can not imagine my surprise when I got back from Germany and saw the double size of Ranunculus leafs compared to the growth from the past few months. And all that was different in the ferts regime was the K+ supply coming from mixed K+ salts solution rather than just plain simple KNO3 or K2SO4 or what ever.
The rest of ferts in the tank were Easy Life Profito and Tobi's Special N recipe that I am quite convinced that it works.
Providing that as a rule I always overdose I bit of all ferts to prevent shortage of anything it is unlikely that any of the chemical elements in my K+ solution would have done the miracle.

I do believe that various compounds as a source of the same component would in many cases (probably not all) do better job than one and the same compound.

But then what the hell. I probably tricked my self into some voodoo crap.
 
Aquadream said:
From my personal experience I am convinced that Tobi is not wrong in his believe that source compounds do matter.
Example.
The best and most concentrated and pure source of NO3 is HNO3. I used it a while ago in my tanks. Problem with this method is that it ends up with constant increase of GH and KH levels that comes as a direct result of HNO3 reacing with substrate particles, wood etc. more specifically the H+ from the acid.
Another example.
As a K+ source I have tried ADA Brighty K that is K2CO3, then I tried KCl, also I have tried K2SO4. They all work with possibly small side effects if overdosed, but nothing to worry about.
Growth in my tanks was always good with those salts. However the K2CO3 do tend to boost up the KH after long periods of use. KCl would top up too much Cl that is not so important element as other chemical elements. K2 SO4 will top up too much Sulphur in the form of SO4 that can precipitate other cations into inaccessible for the plants salts.
Needless to say too much Sulphur in aquatic environment could lead to acidification of the sediments.
So I was scratching my head what to do about those.
I decided to mix the 3 compounds in one solution as the ratios by weight are as follows.
K2CO3 25%, K2SO4 37.5%, KCl 37.5%.
The whole idea was to minimise the excess build up of any chemical element while supplying K+.
I made the solution and went on the road to Germany for 10 days. I instructed my wife to inject all ferts in the tank every day as every fret bottle was with a label stating how many pumps to squirt into the tank per day. Pretty simple.
You can not imagine my surprise when I got back from Germany and saw the double size of Ranunculus leafs compared to the growth from the past few months. And all that was different in the ferts regime was the K+ supply coming from mixed K+ salts solution rather than just plain simple KNO3 or K2SO4 or what ever.
The rest of ferts in the tank were Easy Life Profito and Tobi's Special N recipe that I am quite convinced that it works.
Providing that as a rule I always overdose I bit of all ferts to prevent shortage of anything it is unlikely that any of the chemical elements in my K+ solution would have done the miracle.

I do believe that various compounds as a source of the same component would in many cases (probably not all) do better job than one and the same compound.

But then what the hell. I probably tricked my self into some voodoo crap.
Click to expand...

... so you are still dosing K+ from various sources other than KNO3, plus Tobi's Special N + traces etc.. The difference with EI being that K & NO3 are being tagged to different ions than K-NO3. With your method you are actually dosing extra Cl, SO4, and CO3 (which will disintegrate pretty fast). Maybe the SO4 and Cl ions are then tampering your pH, kH, or something else..? Have you checked (& compared with EI) this observation?

I am still confused (actually more now) since once in water these compounds get into ionic states, and how should this matter then on?

.. Oh I know: WAR OF THE IONS & survival of the fittest!

-niru
 
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