Journal Ben's Plant Pharm 2.0

[BenB]

I hope you can figure this out. Don't give up!

Ah.... I'm just frustrated. I'm sure I'm here to stay. I wish I had hobbies like knitting that when I was a little burned out, I could just put it away for awhile. But no, I like plants. I used to have several hundred orchids.

Yeah, even my experience with the APT all-n-ones is that if I start with heavy dosing too early, especially APT 3 and before plant mass is well established, the algae struggle is rough. I'm still not knowledgeable enough to know how to avoid it other than dosing lean early on. I could use some in-person training from some of our experts here.

This is actually my new strategy. It will be a few days before I get around to making a post. I DIY'ed some macros and going to start doing daily. More on that later.

I had this thought as well as I'm about to plant and dial in my tank this weekend. My initial idea is to bury APT Jazz tabs under the planting areas where my stems will be and then start with APT 1 for a few months and then gradually switch over to APT 3, or skip Jazz until my controsoil is done kicking nutrients and start straight off with APT 3 at half dose.

I don't know enough about those products, but I have the Jazz, and it's convenient to use you tweezers and shove under a special group of plants you feel needs a boost. I lean more towards a few spoonfuls of the Feast though when I want to supplement a certain area of my tank. Its cheaper. Again, I don't know as much about those products, but it might make sense that it's a good natural progression to start with 1, then graduate to 3 as your plants establish, then use E as your aquasoil gets depleted. Maybe that is the intent. I haven't looked into them.

I have Control Soil as well. It's hard to find good info on all the different brands. It was my intention to use different ones and report back how high my initial ammonia levels were and how long it seemed to be before they gave out. That didn't pan out. Oh well.

Thanks everybody!!

 

[Fishstery]

Ah.... I'm just frustrated. I'm sure I'm here to stay. I wish I had hobbies like knitting that when I was a little burned out, I could just put it away for awhile. But no, I like plants. I used to have several hundred orchids.


This is actually my new strategy. It will be a few days before I get around to making a post. I DIY'ed some macros and going to start doing daily. More on that later.


I don't know enough about those products, but I have the Jazz, and it's convenient to use you tweezers and shove under a special group of plants you feel needs a boost. I lean more towards a few spoonfuls of the Feast though when I want to supplement a certain area of my tank. Its cheaper. Again, I don't know as much about those products, but it might make sense that it's a good natural progression to start with 1, then graduate to 3 as your plants establish, then use E as your aquasoil gets depleted. Maybe that is the intent. I haven't looked into them.

I have Control Soil as well. It's hard to find good info on all the different brands. It was my intention to use different ones and report back how high my initial ammonia levels were and how long it seemed to be before they gave out. That didn't pan out. Oh well.

Thanks everybody!!

Yeah, Dennis suggests APT 1 for the first 3 months or so if using fresh aquasoil, until you build enough plant mass. APT 3 is meant to be sufficient enough to grow whatever you want to but keeping growth speeds moderate, APT E is meant for fast growth and propagation with densely planted tanks with demanding species. I haven't used the APT line up in years, but back a few years ago I grew Macandra Mini cultivars with controsoil and APT 3 with 150 PAR at the substrate and didn't have any stunting, just slow growth.

For me at least, controsoil is always very consistent with leeching 2ppm of ammonia. The nutrients will remain as long as you keep up with water column dosing, aside from ammonia. The buffering capacity depends on the water source, I use tap water that's a pH of 7.8, 6-7 dgh, and 4-5 dkh , and the buffering kicks out around 6-12 months. I've only messed with RO water in a Nano dutch hybrid and still had algae issues, so with my new 50 gallon I'm just going to use tap and deal with the lack of buffering later by using Dennis's method of uprooting plant sections and replacing the soil a few cups at a time, vs trying to reset the entire tank. Or decide if I want to finally set up my 5 stage RODI system and deal with making RO.

 

[BenB]

I don’t want this to seem as bleak as it looks in the pics. It’s a hot mess, but I have new fast growing tc plants. Hopefully things will calm down, but as I write this my tank doesn't seem to be pearling much. My biggest concern at the moment is that I seem to have the same algae @bradquade had that attacked the lower portions of his plants. Some of the tc I bought a few weeks ago dissolved and disappeared almost overnight. I bought a few cups of tc locally that didn’t have to be shipped and were in better shape. So far so good. Hopefully they get going before the algae gets hold.

A message from Brad made me evaluate what I had done to my tank recently that could have cause this. I had just put in some new tc plants and added aquasoil. Probably the spike in ammonia coupled with the low established healthy plant mass shocked the stability of the system and exacerbated my problems. So, since things are not happy anyway, it’s a good time to change dosing regimens.

I'm switching to daily dosing for the best stability. I've been avoiding daily dosing because I didn't want to be tied down to my tank, but since I go look at it multiple times daily anyway, why not? I'm dosing 2.5ppm NO3, 0.8ppm PO4, and 2ppm K daily in addition to micros. I'm front loading with a double dose after a 50% water change. I've already been doing this several days. You can see in THIS thread that my initial concern is that I might not be starting with a high enough level of macros. That will need to be determined. If my plants don't get back pearling, I might test earlier, but the plan is to keep with this regimen a couple weeks for levels to settle out, and then do some testing while keeping an eye on the plants to make sure my levels are high enough.

I bought Rotala rotundifolia ‘Blood Red,’ Monte Carlo, and P helferi tc plants. First time I’ve ever had the Blood Red. I’ve never seen tc change to submerged form and take off so fast. The Monte Carlos isn’t something I really wanted, but I felt it would suck down nutrients and help restore stability quickly. I already had the P helferi, but I had thinned it because it had grown out of control. It was after the thinning of some plants that I added the aquasoil and all this started. When everything with south, much of what I had left died, and what didn’t die was struggling. The tc I ordered died quickly. The new locally bought cup is hanging in there.

One day I'll have a set up with no issues, but then what would I talk to you guys about?


Healthy vs stunting R macrandra

Melted plants