plantbrain
Expert
- Joined
- 2 Aug 2007
- Messages
- 1,938
Hi,
Bear with me here and think about this, not the perceptions, rather, the facts and critical thinking involved.I have long been hearing folks poo poo EI for being "crude", "merely a guess", "inaccurate", "old ways of doing things", "Less advanced" and many other similar terms. Ironically, when we look at the alternative, it's no better.
Dosing calculators pose the same issues as a guess, an estimation of the true measure. The weights used for dosing calculators are based on the densities, which can vary greatly due to air spaces and grain size differences in the fertilizer salts if you use volume, and hydroscopic uptake of water, which is a function of RH% in the air and varies month to season to year(all salts do this to different degrees). Scales used might be 4.8 grams, 4.87 grams, or 4.879 grams.
Those that use teaspoon volumes from dosing calculators(which are most hobbyist) still have those issues and few have perfectly level dosing after a few months in of typical dosing, we all get sloppy.
So even a nice gram scale will not give you perfectly accuracy. I suppose it dried the salts with heat as well and took a few more steps, you could get closer. Not met anyone willing or who has done that stuff yet in the hobby however.
Error bars around these dosing measures are not reported, many do not know how to do such error bars.
These same dosing errors are incorporated into these dosing calculators.
They(dosing calculators) are just merely mathmatical models, just like infinite series is with EI dosing. They estimate, EI at least gives some error ranges(typically the 2x version using the total dosed over the a week and with a 50% water change). Perhaps their error range is smaller, but does this matter in the real aquarium? There is no such evidence that is the case, regardless if someone fails and gets algae, often times it's an issue with light/CO2, not to do with excess, however, folks will believe steer manure, perception(think politicians speaking the talk, not what they really mean) over facts or logic.
Reference solutions. These are not pure accuracy, they have the same errors as do the water uptake issues, and if the teaspoons and 5mls spoons are used. Then these might be off by a few %, leading to another level of error if the calibration solutions are used. Some aquarist say they do not want to be bothered with these reference solutions, their test kits are "good enough", well, then they are simply guessing. Even a poorly made reference solution is still a guess.
You can see there's a lot of guessing going on here with test kits.
How about the colormetric scales for such test kits?
Can you tell the difference between 20 and 40ppm of NO3?
Maybe a little, maybe +/- 10ppm.
Add some other issues with dosing referenced above, you are not that much better off than EI dosing.
This was my argument over a decade ago. As far as being "advanced" etc, well, EI used management approaches to apply some common sense that many had been doing all along, test kits where the old way being used and touted. EI was the new model that showed some reason to the dose method used by many along with good sized water changes.
the method of EI is not my own, I just argued for it based on management. Advancement might mean less labor and simpler, much like starting a fire with wood and cooking that way vs the microwave/convection oven to heat food up.
Few old timers who I would suggest are "advanced", test, fiddle and micromanage things. They chose lower light, easy to care for plants, spend less time and labor on their tanks. That's a goal "attained". That is an advanced aquarist. the names, lingo/jargon etc, matters not.
So are test kits methods really accurate, really offer these supposedly grand benefits?
Or are folks merely trying to suggest something that they do that works for them, even if the observed tanks do fine either way? I wonder.
Seems they are guessing as much as the next person. With good methods, they should be able to get closer, but only with good methods, and knowing what assumptions that have added to their own model. Still, as pure observationalist, we can see EI offers no risk or ill effects, most of the differences between users are due to light/CO2 dependencies, not dosing(unless they have been under dosing strongly).
So even a person without much knowledge/background but with common sense can see the methods are not much different in the final result. So then it becomes a management issue for the hobbyists, what is the easiest least labor and easiest to stay on top of for me?
If you cannot win an argument this way, you need words of perception.
Regards,
Tom Barr
Bear with me here and think about this, not the perceptions, rather, the facts and critical thinking involved.I have long been hearing folks poo poo EI for being "crude", "merely a guess", "inaccurate", "old ways of doing things", "Less advanced" and many other similar terms. Ironically, when we look at the alternative, it's no better.
Dosing calculators pose the same issues as a guess, an estimation of the true measure. The weights used for dosing calculators are based on the densities, which can vary greatly due to air spaces and grain size differences in the fertilizer salts if you use volume, and hydroscopic uptake of water, which is a function of RH% in the air and varies month to season to year(all salts do this to different degrees). Scales used might be 4.8 grams, 4.87 grams, or 4.879 grams.
Those that use teaspoon volumes from dosing calculators(which are most hobbyist) still have those issues and few have perfectly level dosing after a few months in of typical dosing, we all get sloppy.
So even a nice gram scale will not give you perfectly accuracy. I suppose it dried the salts with heat as well and took a few more steps, you could get closer. Not met anyone willing or who has done that stuff yet in the hobby however.
Error bars around these dosing measures are not reported, many do not know how to do such error bars.
These same dosing errors are incorporated into these dosing calculators.
They(dosing calculators) are just merely mathmatical models, just like infinite series is with EI dosing. They estimate, EI at least gives some error ranges(typically the 2x version using the total dosed over the a week and with a 50% water change). Perhaps their error range is smaller, but does this matter in the real aquarium? There is no such evidence that is the case, regardless if someone fails and gets algae, often times it's an issue with light/CO2, not to do with excess, however, folks will believe steer manure, perception(think politicians speaking the talk, not what they really mean) over facts or logic.
Reference solutions. These are not pure accuracy, they have the same errors as do the water uptake issues, and if the teaspoons and 5mls spoons are used. Then these might be off by a few %, leading to another level of error if the calibration solutions are used. Some aquarist say they do not want to be bothered with these reference solutions, their test kits are "good enough", well, then they are simply guessing. Even a poorly made reference solution is still a guess.
You can see there's a lot of guessing going on here with test kits.
How about the colormetric scales for such test kits?
Can you tell the difference between 20 and 40ppm of NO3?
Maybe a little, maybe +/- 10ppm.
Add some other issues with dosing referenced above, you are not that much better off than EI dosing.
This was my argument over a decade ago. As far as being "advanced" etc, well, EI used management approaches to apply some common sense that many had been doing all along, test kits where the old way being used and touted. EI was the new model that showed some reason to the dose method used by many along with good sized water changes.
the method of EI is not my own, I just argued for it based on management. Advancement might mean less labor and simpler, much like starting a fire with wood and cooking that way vs the microwave/convection oven to heat food up.
Few old timers who I would suggest are "advanced", test, fiddle and micromanage things. They chose lower light, easy to care for plants, spend less time and labor on their tanks. That's a goal "attained". That is an advanced aquarist. the names, lingo/jargon etc, matters not.
So are test kits methods really accurate, really offer these supposedly grand benefits?
Or are folks merely trying to suggest something that they do that works for them, even if the observed tanks do fine either way? I wonder.
Seems they are guessing as much as the next person. With good methods, they should be able to get closer, but only with good methods, and knowing what assumptions that have added to their own model. Still, as pure observationalist, we can see EI offers no risk or ill effects, most of the differences between users are due to light/CO2 dependencies, not dosing(unless they have been under dosing strongly).
So even a person without much knowledge/background but with common sense can see the methods are not much different in the final result. So then it becomes a management issue for the hobbyists, what is the easiest least labor and easiest to stay on top of for me?
If you cannot win an argument this way, you need words of perception.
Regards,
Tom Barr
