Dosing and ADA soil

[Skyfish]

I am just about ready to order ADA AS and PS special and needed some more advice on dosing for my 80G tank.

I have already been doing the EI method for a year and a half now. Tom if you remember you had advised me to use peat/laterite beneath my gravel, and initial start up was to keep the lights low, with full dosing of ferts and CO2, then after two weeks light go full blow.

In my previous thread you mentioned that the dosing would be the same with the nutrient rich AS, so business as usual with EI.

This time my tank will be completely torn down and I will start from scratch, but I will still save some of the mulm and a few plants from my current tank to speed up the cycle, and use Stability. (I can even save a handful of the old gravel) which can be placed below the PS.

So question is, how will the initial start up be? I have been told in another forum that I should not dose anything expect K for 4 to 6 weeks and for that I should use Brighty K.

I have a lot of dry ferts in stock, KNO3, PO4, Mg, SO4, CSM and also TMG. These are far cheaper then the ADA liquid ferts, which do the same thing.

1/ What do I dose in the first 2 weeks while the lights are low? Just one dosing or the usual 3 times a week? With low lights plants won't need so much ferts?

2/ CO2 as usual should be at full speed.

3/ Should I keep lights at 144 watts in the initial two weeks?

Could you give me a start up regime for at least 2 weeks to a month? If you think that initially I might need Brighty K and Green Bectar then I can order it with the AS/PS.

I’d appreciate your advice.

 

[chiahead]

Re: Dosing and ADA soil

The recomendations of using the Brighty K is not purely for the K. It does have a kh buffer (and a dechlor-useless) in it also. What is commonly noticed is that during the first 4 weeks or so the AS removes pretty much all the kh/gh in the tank. I am not sure how it does this but I have had it happen in both my AS setups. Co2 should always be maxed out. I recomend no fish for a while since the AS has some Nh4 in it. Blast that co2 beyond normal values. Dose 1/2 the ferts for 2 weeks. Do weekly or biweekly water changes. This is just my recomendations and I am surely no expert. Hope this helped a bit.

 

[Tom Barr]

Re: Dosing and ADA soil

1/ What do I dose in the first 2 weeks while the lights are low? Just one dosing or the usual 3 times a week? With low lights plants won't need so much ferts?

2/ CO2 as usual should be at full speed.

3/ Should I keep lights at 144 watts in the initial two weeks?

Could you give me a start up regime for at least 2 weeks to a month? If you think that initially I might need Brighty K and Green Bectar then I can order it with the AS/PS.

I’d appreciate your advice.

1. If you plant fully, I mean pack the tank, then you can.
What happens when you prune a lot?
Same thing here.
Most dose back that day after a water change.

The mulm is there, everything else is dione, the filter etc, all that's changing is most of the substrate.

You can do either method actually, the ADA soil is forgiving and the PS will not require you to dose, but dosing should not hurt, and generally will serve you better.

But adding enough plants from the start is the biggest new planted tank issue.

You could do a leaner version of EI if you wanted, 2x a week ought to be enough for most tanks, 3x is in case some plant is very hungry.

2.Add as much CO2 as you can.......

3. I add a lot of light generally myself. Some tanks I really like are low light though. I will opt for less light if I see algae, then try and correct the nutrients and remove the algae that's there.

I also do not wait till the algae gets going, I attack it soon.

The KH/GH decline is from the peat and it's also in the ADA soil(semi soft Clay peat mix). Peat loves cations like Mg/Ca etc. Also messes with the pH.

Gives you a false positive, believeing that you have more CO2ppm than you think.

Overall, the ADA soil is pretty forgiving in terms of fodsig, so you can have a number of routines work pretty, well, from pretty lean, to pretty rich.

I plan on doing an anaylsis of the ADA ferts so if folks want, they can replicate the solutions.

Regards,
Tom Barr