300l - Crystal River Shore

[Nuno M.]

Hi Nuno (is this your name?)!

maybe you could tell us your name. We love to use it

What he wanted to say is, that we speak to each other by our firstnames here at this forum. Have a look at our signatures.

This is a really healthy, beautiful tank! I also know the "original", but this does no harm to the result. Your layout is niiice!

Regarding the red coloring of the Rotala... I use Aqua Rebell Mikro Spezial Flowgrow and this works fine. What ferts do you use for N? In my opinion this also has influence to the coloration of plants.

Hi Andy,

Thank you for tour reply ....

Nuno is indeed my first name :lol: so all of you are more than welcome to call me that way :bier:

I've come to FlowGrow community to learn more about German Aquascapers fertilization techniques, so all your input is indeed very appreciated ....

My fertilization regime is based on the Estimative Index and goes as follow:

Bottle 1 - NPK + Ca + Mg (500ml)
KNO3 - 6.52g
KH2PO4 - 4.30g
Ca(NO3) - 14.75g
Mg(NO3) - 8.8g

Bottle 2 - K + FE (500ml)
K2SO4 - 27.3g
EDTA FE (13%) - 7.7g
Acido Ascórbico - 0.5g
Sorbato de Potássio - 0.2g

Doses:
5ml for 50L daily

This gives a daily input of:

3.2ppm No3
0.6ppm Po4
3.2ppm K
0.5ppm Ca
0.17ppm Mg
0.2ppm Fe

By my calculations my tank has about 200l of water taking out the substrate and hardscape volume, and currently I'm only doing 10ml of both daily, so the daily input is half of the mentioned above ...

As for Aquarebell ferts they get to expensive to order to my country (Portugal) from aquasabi.de, the KramerDrak, seemed like a good Fe/Trace fertilization and is selled in powder form, and in this way the postage costs is a lot less than buying 5l of Aquarebell Spezial Mikro ...

I want to change mainly because, my Fe based fert is a little basic and only with one form of Iron

TNC TRACE - Fe 8.4% (EDTA), Mn 1.82% (EDTA), Zn 1.16% (EDTA), B 1.05%, Cu 0.23% (EDTA), Mo 0.15%

compared to KramerDrak - ( 20,980 mg/l potassium, 3,440 mg/l magnesium, 1,875 mg/l iron, 715 mg/l manganese, 92 mg/l copper, 80 mg/l zinc, 70 mg/l boron, 43 mg/l molybdenum, 25 mg/l cobalt, 6.6 mg/l lithium, 6.5 mg/l vanadium, 6.3 mg/l aluminium, 6.3 mg/l nickel, 6 mg/l selenium, 5.3 mg/l tin, EDTA, HEEDTA, DTPA, NTA, ascorbic acid, methyl paraben, benzoic acid )

I'm a member of UKAPS, and this is how I've come to know FlowGrow, with a topic from Tobias talking about his ferts Aquarebell - Spezial N ... Based on that I've already tried to mix my own batch of Spezial N and are planing on changing to it soon and see how my tank will grow with it ...

As you can see my NPK mix is based in Tobias recipe but with no urea in it, and with PO4 ...

What i want to do next is something like this:

Spezial N - 6ml daily

Estimative Index - This is my own recipe based on EI daily regime - 6ml daily
Bottle of 500ml RO Water
KNO3 - 26.09g
KH2PO4 - 4.3g
K2SO4 - 10.36g

KramerDrak - 6ml daily

This will give me a daily input of:

NO3 - 1.64ppm
0.21ppm from Urea
PO4 - 0.12ppm
K - 1.26ppm
Ca - 0.1ppm
Mg - 0.1ppm
Urea - 0.1ppm
Fe - 0.04ppm

What do you think about this ?? Is very very lean compared to my actual fertilization :sceptic:

I've been having real good results so far my only complain is the lack of red coloration on certain plant species ...

Best Regards, Nuno Matos (my first and last name by the way) :thumbs:

 

[Aquariophilo]

Hi Nuno,

What do you think about this ?? Is very very lean compared to my actual fertilization :sceptic:

You are right, the new dosing regime looks like very little nutrient input compared to what you are dosing now, but I think it is enough for your tank.

My tank, for example, uses like 1.5 ppm NO3 and 0,1 ppm PO4 each day (when all plants are growing well). And the Potassium consumption of the plants is really low, like 3-4 ppm each week. There are some people here at Flowgrow who have nicely growing tanks and who measured the K consumption, which in comparison to NO3 is really low. So there is no need to heavyly overdose Potassium like the EI does it (but which works for many people quite well).

Also there are users like Olaf-Peter (kiko) who really has alot of experience with rare plants, who observed a much greener growth, when potassium was high in the tank. So I think to enhance the red colouring, reducing the potassium level to approx. 10ppm in your tank is sufficient and perhaps the colouring will improve, especially, when the NO3-level is kept low, too. And if you use urea, the plants will grow faster even if you dose less NO3-equivalent, since plants don't need as much energy to process urea (and the resulting ammonium) as they need when processing NO3.

The KramerDrak is a good combination with urea. To process urea, plants need to produce an enzyme called urease. They can only produce urease if nickel is present (which is a trace element thats added by KramerDrak). So this could work quite well together.

I am curious what changes you will witness once you have changed the dosing regime. Please keep us updated.

Best regards
Stefan

 

[Nuno M.]

Thank's again for your input Stefan,

For now I'm still using my EI based fertilization, on the start of the next month, I will order the Kramer Drak from Aquasabi and start the above mentioned routine, I will keep you all updated :smile:

And three months have passed,

The last trim was made a bit late, and we are now seeing if the back plants grow until the end of the week to send a good photo for the IAPLC 2014

So here it is with 91 days

 

[AQ Dave]

Heym

such a great work. Good luck @ IAPLC 2014 :bier:

gruß
dave

 

[Nuno M.]

Heym

such a great work. Good luck @ IAPLC 2014 :bier:

gruß
dave

Thank you Dave ,
Not expecting a great result but a jury comment would be great . :smile:


Starting today, I will start my new fert regime with:

Makro Basic Estimative Index, Makro Spezial N and KramerDrak

My tank has about 200-220l of useful water if we take out the glass thickness, substrate and hardscape volume ...

So I will start with a dose of 6ml each, daily and see where this goes .

Any advice here ?? Anyone ?? Should I dose based on the tank total volume (300l) with 9ml each ?? :sceptic:

This doses are based on the fertilizing recommendation here at FlowGrow Nutrient Calculator


And here are some photos of the 101 day , going a bit wild :lol:

Regards, Nuno Matos

 

[Nuno M.]

Hi everyone,

So one week of new dosing regime with:

Makro Basic Estimative Index - 6ml daily
Makro Spezial N - 6ml daily
KramerDrak - 6ml daily

Well for starters i've noticed a greater grouth rate compared to my previous fertilization :gdance:

And it's soon to tell, but the red is starting to apear on the stems :thumbs:

Here are the results of my weekly water tests:

dGH - 6º
dKH - 4º
pH - 6.6 right after CO2 goes off
NO3 - 20ppm
PO4 - 0.5ppm
FE - less than 0.1ppm :?

So based on this should I up the Makro Basic Estimative Index to 9ml Daily to up the PO4 ??

And KramerDrak should I up this to ?

I'm not used to such lean results :lol:

If anyone can advice here I would really appreciate :-/

Tomorrow I will Upload some photos :smile:

 

[Nuno M.]

Well good news here ...

Since no advice has followed from you guys, I've made the changes based on my previous fertilization

And WOOOW this Spezial N along with KramerDrak has taken off the plants to other level.

So the changes were

12ml Aquarebell Makro Spezial N daily
24ml Aquarebell Makro Basic Phosphat daily
21ml KramerDrak daily

Giving me a daily input of:

NO3 - 3,01ppm in which 0,62?ppm comes from Urea
PO4 - 0,6ppm
K - 3,04ppm
Fe - 0,2ppm
Ca - 0,3ppm
Mg - 0,46ppm
Urea - 0,3ppm

The plants are now healthier, plants seem to thrive more, more pearling. :gdance:

My Ratala Rotundifolia is now pinkish, and with no fert limitations.

So as you can see I've used this ferts according to my previously Ei daily goals

And here is a panorama for the actual tank state.

It's in need of a major trimming job :lol: