SuperColey1 said:
Now you must forgive me I have to get back to not testing at all.
Completely agree with this. EI Freedom Fighters have sworn an oath, on pain of death, to never test for NO3 or PO4.
The first premise is simple. Algae can
never be induced by NO3/PO4. Algae is only ever induced by the presence of ammonia and light. There are a plethora of ways in which ammonia can be produced in a tank, but often, a typical way is through poor plant health caused by
insufficient NO3/PO4.
The second premise is ironic. Hobby grade test kits are inherently unreliable. Whether because of interactions of the reagents with unanticipated chemicals in the tank water, age of the reagents, humidity or whatever. As sods law would have it, in my experience the test results would typically show false high concentration.
Now, consider this deadly combination where you did not believe in the first premise and you were unaware of the second premise. You would underdose NO3/PO4, starve the plants, and algae would appear. You would then test and get a false high reading. You would then try to eliminate even more NO3/PO4 from the tank thus getting more algae and falling into a vicious cycle.
In my opinion, this is why we have such astounding proliferation of algae in the hobby. People simply don't believe in the first premise. Visit any LFS and tell the staff you have algae. 99% of the time the response will be "Get rid of your Phosphates", followed by "Buy this PO4 test kit" and finally, "Buy this Phosphate remover".
So now that the test kit flaws are revealed and folks are aware of the second premise the idea is to concoct a series of known concentrations of NO3/PO4 and test each concoction. If you know that a concoction is 20ppm and you test it, and you test kit results show 20 ppm then you know that your test kit can accurately test for 20 ppm. Do the same for the other standard solutions - 10ppm, 30ppm and see how the kit responds. You can even plot a graph of your test kit response to see what kind of fidelity the kit has. You can then see how much correction is necessary so that, for example you can see that the kit reads 5ppm high across a certain range of concentrations.
This is a sound scientific technique, no question, but if you are experiencing algae and are going through all this trouble and do not believe in the first premise, it's a colossal waste of time.
On the other hand, many folks who use the PPS dosing techniques must use the calibration because PPS requires the maintenance of a specific NO3/PO4 concentration profile in order to control growth, or to some extent, coloration. This is a different issue altogether and the PPS guys will chime in.
EI Freedom Fighters' response to all this is a gigantic "YAWN". We dose max nutrients, never suffer NO3/PO4 deficiency and if we want to control growth we turn the lights down. That just requires flipping a switch. We know that if we get algae then we need to track down the source of NH4. We never need to test.
The 5 or 7 quid saved by not buying a test kit can be used instead to buy a cool new plant (if I can find the space for it). :idea:
Cheers,