That's my plan. I'll watch pH, because I can, but I won't play with
it. I'm putting Silicate and Borate in to enable the metabolism of
transition metals. I was putting Phosphate in, but someone tells me
that plants need it more in their roots than in their leaves. If it's
in their roots, then plants can draw metals out of the water.

As trace mineral sources, I hav Brazil Nut shells and corrosion
resistant pot scrubbers. Iif I can just get the composition of the
soil right... A major portion,
methinks, oughta be silt -- perhaps from the birch log that feeds my
daphnia (if they survive this third trial). I'm not sure how much peat
and clay, probably about 10...40...30..20 compost to silt to peat to
clay.

Most other numbers can rot in a politician's mouth. I'll watch some of
them, but I didn't get into this watching the numbers, so I don't
think I will start. Maybe I'll put a mineral supplement in, but the K
and P seem to be dead ends.

CO2? Between the fish, the airstone, decaying detritus, and carbonate
in the minerals, there oughta be enough.
_______
a href="http://ecn.ab.ca/~brewhaha/New_Tank_Syndrome.htm"One step in
the wrong direction for man is expensive./a

On Aug 1, 4:00 am, Ded Objekts In Veevoh
wrote:
That's my plan. I'll watch pH, because I can, but I won't play with
it. I'm putting Silicate and Borate in to enable the metabolism of
transition metals. I was putting Phosphate in, but someone tells me
that plants need it more in their roots than in their leaves. If it's
in their roots, then plants can draw metals out of the water.

As trace mineral sources, I hav Brazil Nut shells and corrosion
resistant pot scrubbers. Iif I can just get the composition of the
soil right... A major portion,
methinks, oughta be silt -- perhaps from the birch log that feeds my
daphnia (if they survive this third trial). I'm not sure how much peat
and clay, probably about 10...40...30..20 compost to silt to peat to
clay.

Most other numbers can rot in a politician's mouth. I'll watch some of
them, but I didn't get into this watching the numbers, so I don't
think I will start. Maybe I'll put a mineral supplement in, but the K
and P seem to be dead ends.

CO2? Between the fish, the airstone, decaying detritus, and carbonate
in the minerals, there oughta be enough.
_______
a href="http://ecn.ab.ca/~brewhaha/New_Tank_Syndrome.htm"One step in
the wrong direction for man is expensive./a


It really depends on your goal.
Some add CO2 gas, it can amplify growth by 10-20X even with low light.
That allows far more intensive gardening/scaping.

Si and B are not going increase the metal use much unless they
limiting which is rather rare.
Plants have no issue absorbing P via the leaves, root preference
really does not matter, you can add the ferts in both locations and
see. Cedergreen and Madsen, perhaps the top folks working on
allocation and growth in aquatic weeds, even cut off the roots and the
plants had to exact same growth rate with 4 submersed species when the
water column was enriched with N and P etc.

So if they prefer PO4 via the roots, it never was shown to be the case
in their recent study(2002).

The plants had no roots!
The treatment(root removal) and the control plants had the same growth
rate.

So it had no effect on plant growth.
Same is true for N.

Not all plants may have this trait however, some may have the
preference, but without doing this same test on all 300 species, we
really will not know that much, still, the notion that plants prefer P
or N via the roots is clearly debatable given such studies and in
grave danger as any sort of generalization.

You can add a number of things for traces, low tech or high tech,
really up to you, hard to show differences, they are traces and
therefore are hard to measure and show cause.

Most do not get into this hobby to watch numbers, test their water
etc.
Some believe that they must to figure anything out or resolve any
issue they have.

Neither is true.

We can do other things to resolve providing a decent range of
nutrients for the plants.

Regards,
Tom Barr

www.BarrReport.com