Please, let me/us know on your results. I suppose you're going to see Fe and/or Mg deficiency symptoms.
I became suspicious when I saw pinholes in the older leaves of H. pinnatifada , and I remember reading on another thread here that those symptoms are related to potassium deficiency. Apparently H. pinnatifada is a real potassium hoover.
I believe some people have tried 50+ ppm K to solve this pinhole issues and still couldn't fix it. in my experience, it was found that it was strongly related to Micros. it magically disappeared when I was using Tropica Clone and I was only adding like 1-2 ppm K weekly from it, which also added 0.4 -0.8 ppm Mg weekly. these are some of the area to look into and also whatever @_Maq_ have said.
we wait and see how this goes.
Interesting. I’m already adding 10ppm of Mg weekly.
EI is high on potassium mainly because Tom Barr maintains that ammonium is the reason of algae - which is patently wrong - and thus sticks to KNO3 for nitrogen fertilizing. Thanks to that, his K : N ratio is always >=1 : 1 [molar]. Which is at least four times more potassium than the plants can utilize.
www.researchgate.net
I can't comment on this because I have yet to experiment in a clean tank, but I will add that in my experience, urea dosing seems to drastically amplify algae if it's already present. I used it in my tank when it had a mild amount of BBA, and the BBA grew significantly more than without the urea dosing. So I'd imagine Urea/NH4 may only really be 'safe' if used in an algae-free tank? I plan to re-try it when my algae is all gone.
I've got limited experience with urea. But I routinely dose nitrogen with NH4NO3, I can say, for many years, in many tanks (currently eight). It makes no difference compared to tanks with nitrates only (and without fish - which means no feeding, no ammonia from fish).
I'm keen to be present when you report your results.
It can be complicated if you want it to be and spend loads of time thinking most of your issues are fert related. Fortunately many times over our issues in our tank are not fertilizer related, at least not directly.
Could you please elaborate on that rational? Those targets are standard EI targets. In my experience I see no such deficiencies with those targets which I have been using for years.
And I have to disagree with @_Maq_ statement. Not in my experience. Urea>ammonia does trigger algae, and good. The severity of the proliferation will depends on the amount used. My journal is testament to that. Adding urea triggered extensive GSA and hair algae and it's not like I pumped loads of urea. It was 1/4th of my nitrogen target. Yes I could have added even less but saying that it does not cause algae is just misleading and wrong. Decreasing it lowered algae. Removing it made GSA disappear entirely within 1 week. Perhaps if I had waited longer, algae would have disappeared entirely while still using urea but I was in no mood to continue the "experiment" as this meant loss of revenu for me.
I've had a small amount of green hair algae since I started using the <"Solufeed 2 : 1 : 4"> mix.
That was one reason for suggesting a commercial <"horticultural fertiliser">, if they didn't work the companies selling them would have gone out of business long ago.
Right now I'm running an experiment targeted at different responses of various plant species to differing nitrogen fertilizers. A - urea, B - ammonium, C - half ammonium, half nitrates, D - nitrates. All in the same amount [molar] and identical amount of other nutrients.
I've been dosing Tropica Specialized for +10 months in one of my tanks without issues (the N in Specialized is from NH4NO3). I am dosing small amounts targeting ~1 ppm N. Unlike NO3, I do think with Urea/NH4 there is a limit where you likely can trigger algae blooms - just as @Hanuman and others have reported over the years - the amount, and perhaps interaction with other conditions / parameters plays a role - I do not know.
You can start by looking at my journal for pictures that show exactly the opposite. I don't know what kind of experiment you are doing and under what conditions, but adding urea can trigger algae blooms if dosed even in slight excess of what the tank can handle at any given time no matter whether that's high tech or low tech. I and Tom Barr are far from being the only ones who have experienced this. Many people have experienced the same and it has been reported in multiple forums. This is also the reason why adding loads of osmocote in a tank is usually a bad idea. Many examples out there about algae explosions after adding osmocote. Only in this thread you just had three example including @xZaiox and @dw1305 and myself. Even @Happi has document and claimed the same in PT forum if I remember correctly. His comment above:
I interpret the conditional "if" as clearly potentially being the source of algae.
Fish don't all pee and exude excrements at the same time. I am pretty sure if we were to suddenly overstock a tank which had no fish in it, you would see some algae bloom, at least temporarily until bacteria catches up.
Exactly my point and the reason why NO3 is mainly being used instead of higher doses of urea in many fertilizers. Urea is a good fertiliser, that's a fact, but it needs to be handled with care.
