Tom,

Your posts are always well articulated and helpful! How about K? I've
never read or hear of overdosing K to the point that it causes any nutrient
imbalance or algae breakout.
I'll experiment with dosing PO4 - as you say maybe the twice a week regimen
may require too much dosing each time as to cause large fluctuations in the
amount of PO4 dosings vice smaller more frequent dosing to keep the ppm more
stable.

DJay


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"Djay" wrote in message
...
After many googles on the subject, I decided to try and dose PO4. I
had
little growth and poor nutrient uptake (read algae) in my 70 gal
pressurised
CO2 high light tank. Nitrate remained high all the time and no real
pearling...

As I said, after reading multiple NG on the dosing of PO4, I tried it
today.
Slowly at first etc.
Immediate change in the pearling of my plants. Holy cow!

Anyone have similar results? I plan on dosing twice a week.

DJay

Djay,
Watch your NO3 now. see how it responds to the PO4 additions.
Plants generally do pretty good if the PO4 bottoms out for a day or
two, but not longer, they start shutting down sugar assimilation. They
basically are a running car that's simply "idling". They are not
growing much or going fast, add the PO4 and then they start.
NO3 has a much more damaging effect when it gets to zero. A day or
less is all it takes and this can and will stunt some plants
complelety forcing them to start completely new growth/side shoots.

Just make sure the NO3 doesn't run out now. The uptake of NO3 will
increase dramatically when you dose PO4.
I figure .2-.4ppm of PO4 per day and about 2-4ppm of NO3 a day based
on the testing I've done and others over the years. This is for higher
light tanks so having less light means it'll use less of these. Main
thing is to not run out for long.

If you dose 2x a week, dose a bit heavy, don't dose just .2ppm etc,
dose to 0.5ppm or so. In 3 days it should be gone.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Yes,.
It does work if there's enough CO2, NO3/K and traces.
If not it won't help.

Often you see a response in 40 mintues to 2 hours.
General uptake in a well planted tank: about 0.2ppm a day ot more.
Note: some can be "luxury uptake" rather than solely what the plant
needs for growth and maintenance.

Regards,
Tom Barr