You've made a couple really big posts since I had a chance to reply. So this is kind of tricky. Also, I'm totally brain dead. Has been a long week and my set-up has given me a bit of aquarium burn out. So cut me a bit of slack with my replies.
After about 4-5 months, the $700 worth of aquasoil began stop providing enough nutrients. Plants were still alive, but I was seeing lots of NO3 deficiency and PO4 deficiency too. I started weekly frontloading of my Macros after 50-70% water changes.
At the 6.5-ish month mark, my aquasoil seems to be severely depleted. If I'm not dosing heavily in the water column, my plants immediately stunt.
Yeah, Burr expresses the same frustrations
HERE.
Still I think to have the amazing garden style tank and start with tissue culture, you need the aquasoils unless you can find a way to dose with ammonia or urea in a way that is easy. I know people do it, but a lot of efforts I've seen in the past have just made algae.
You might could actually be the person who could figure it out.
I'm hoping to have that kind of set-up, then survive the transition to happy tank but with depleted aquasoil, then I might try other things.
I definitely did not understand this for YEARS. I was in the camp of "Every 6-8 months I finally lose the algae battle, and I'm happy to start a new scape anyway". Once I started EI dosing in my tanks (even with all the expensive aquasoil) it changed my entire perspective.
I've known they depleted awhile, but I only have the 60p, so it's not as impactful on my wallet. Again, I don't care. I really want to try some of these tanks that people are doing these days. It's just set me back so much to have a tank that was going amazing turn into a dumpster fire.
Currently I dose both of my high-tech tanks every sunday after ~70% water changes. I dose the new 70% fresh RO water around 26-6-25 ppm NPK, with daily CSM+B micro dosing at 0.1ppm Fe every day. If I don't have a large fish load, I usually need to increase the NO3 dosing to 30ppm or more every week, or I will literally have none left in the tank by the end of the week due to plant consumption.
You have dosing pumps, but you front load your dosing. This surprises me. Is this just what you found works for you? I would think you'd use them to dose just a bit daily. Oh wait, hang on.... your other post gets into this.
Speaking of which, I finally supported. If anyone else wants to support the forum, go here:
https://www.scapecrunch.com/account/upgrades
I did back in January I believe it was.
The easiest way to do this is to split up front loading doses, particularly for KNO3. For example, If my goal is 26-6-35......
I could dose it all on Sunday and likely get some GDA on the glass by the end of the week. Or, I could do 13-3-17 on Sunday, and on Wednesday, for twice-weekly dosing.
Front loading and GDA aside, this is something I need to figure out some day. What I need to dose when the aquasoil depletes. No need to get into it now. The set-up I have is about to be history. It would be a great discussion for when I have to deal with it. Others might want to follow along.
I don't have fish. I'm thinking I'll have to dose just a bit more than most people. I mention this somewhere in my journal.
How long is an extended time? a few days, a few hours?
I was thinking like if it went to 0 on a dosing day, so it would only be a few hours.
Not too long ago in my experiment tank, I tried "precise daily dosing" via my Chihiros Auto Dosers as an attempt to eliminate GDA from my system entirely. The goal was to keep levels at essentially 1/7th of my weekly front-loading, to keep GDA off the glass........ Seemed like a good idea, especially since I was genuinely feeling bored with the success of EI dosing.
I decided: It might be possible to configure some kind of daily dose that provides all the elements our plants need (essentially PPS-Pro dosing concept), but to keep it non-limiting, you have to dose more than what the plants consume, which eventually requires a water change to balance it out... which is already 50% of what the EI method requires. In my mind, all roads lead back to Leibig's law and nonlimiting environments. It's a requirement to grow plants and keep algae at bay, so that should be my priority.
This is sort of what I was getting at above. GDA aside, I was thinking if you dosed in a non-limiting factor daily, it might be better for the plants than front loading. As someone without dosers, I'd prefer to dose intermittantly, but since you have them, I just assumed your plants would respond better to it. Again, GDA not considering.
I guess I'd rather have to scrape some mild GDA off my glass once a week for my whole lifetime, while having incredible plant health, growth, and appearance, than constantly fiddle with daily dosing after the experience I just had for the last month
Yeah, right now I'd be happy with just a little GDA
I'd say whatever you do, keep good records/photos and make sure to share here on Scapecrunch. The discussion is so helpful for so many, I think!
I have the nerdiest aquarium log. I'm not sure how much it helps, but I do look back at it on occasion to try to figure out what was going right or wrong.
is this all tests, what are the reagents? Do they oxidize to a nonfunctional compound over time, what?
and the cutest fish who have ever lived, too. I started treating them in quarantine before adding, and I always anticipate losing 30-40% of the original number I add. They are just so damn sensitive!
www.ukaps.org
