You may see your plants pearling 3 minutes after dosing. It depends
on the light intensity and the other nutrients in the water.

Plants seem to be very picky - if one of the nutrients is missing they
don't eat at all :-D

Fertilizing the water column every few days works.
But a tank that has the balance of fish/plants will not look worst.
It is my personal view that tanks with such balance look much
healthier that tanks with plants only and water column fertilizing.

Tanks that have been established for 4 months and up seem to have
something that makes the plants grow. I want to say that it's the
mulm that accumulates in the substrate. But I don't really know. And
I'm not sure anyone really knows.

One of my tanks that has PO4=0 and NO3=3 a week after the water
change. Traces/e only once a week. 1 average size fish per 2 gals of
water. CO2, 2.7 wpg. After the weekly 50% water change the NO3 drops
to 0. It's a jungle that has to be trimmed heavily every week. How
and why that happens I don't know how to explain. I can only
speculate that the mulm in the Tec-Minerals Filter Media and the fish
waste/bacteria have to do with all that intense growth.

--Nikolay