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

What is P04, and how do you dose it?

"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

PO4 is phosphate. I guess all tanks are different, dosing my tank with PO4 makes me shudder, I have to use a PO4 removing resin to keep my levels under 1mg/l.

"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

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

PO4 is phosphate. Usually it is shunned like the plague in a planted
aquarium tank, however under certain conditions of high light and CO2, the
plants can use up all available PO4 in the water. I think it is called
nutrient starvation. Without it, they cannot process the other essential
nutrients like Nitrate and Potassium. These unprocessed nutrients build up
and cause algae breakouts. Believe it or not, I dose drops from a Fleet
Enema bottle... Contents are Phospates and salt.

DJay,


"Sam" wrote in
:

What is P04, and how do you dose it?

"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

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

) wrote in message . com...
"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

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


" wrote in message
om...
) wrote in message
. com...
"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

I don't think you'll see any issues with K as long as you dose K2SO4
once a week(say 1/4 teaspoon once a week per 20 gallons) etc and if
you use KNO3, you get a fair amount of K from that, which is also
dosed 2-3x a week typically.
It's darn near impossible run low on that if you do the above
routines.
K is hard to test for with the test kits available in the upper
ranges.

Regards,
Tom Barr