EI and "excess nutrients"

[Henry Hatch]

I was reading Tom's article on non co2 tanks regardiing the production of the rubisco enzyme produced by plants to adapt to low co2. As I understand it, in the prescence of high levels of co2 the plants get "lazy" and produce less rubisco.

I started to think about EI dosing. Assumiing that in a given set of conditions a nitrate level of 15 ppm was just enough would the prescence of more nitrates make it easier for plants to take up nitrates and enhance growth ? What about other nutrients ?

Henry

 

[Tom Barr]

This is true for all nutrients.
But to varying degrees, K+, NO3, CO2, light, Fe, Mn, NH4, Mg, Ca, etc.

There might be a few that do not, but most do.

It's about 20-30ppm for NO3 and about the same for K+.

30-50ppm for CO2 etc.
For hydrilla, 6ppm for Fe.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[BHornsey]

Tom,

on this train of thought, what do you consider an average stocking density?
Many of the magazines quote x inches of fish per gallon, etc.
I always try to aim for about 2 gallons per fish in bigger tanks, averaging bigger fish with the smaller. Thus in my 135 USGal (plus 15 Gal in the sump) I have about 50 smaller fish (neons etc) and a dozen larger fish (6 elephant nose and 6 discus)

 

[Tom Barr]

I have a solution for this so the average person can measure their N and P from fish food and thus their waste.

It'll happen hopefully sometime this year.
I need to measure the N and P content of several food sources.

From there, it's simple weighing of the food.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[BHornsey]

That sounds excellent.

A point though: what of live food? I feed brine shrimp and daphnia to the discus once a day and bloodworm for the elephant noses after dark.

I do also give dried food; small pinches several times a day.

 

[Tom Barr]

All you do is dry the live food out etc.


The total N and P etc does not evaporate out etc does it?
It can change form and have better impact for fish etc.

But the total does not change.
You do a dry weight to wet/live weight correlation, much like a teaspoon vs
KNO3 for a 1/4 teaspoon correlation.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Tom Barr]

I'm sending some soil and sediment samples off to another lab for analysis.
This will be an indepndent veritfication of the data and some processes I cannot do here.

While considering this, it makes sense to analyze the fish food as well.
They can do that also.

So I'll have them do those also at the same time.

Regards,
Tom Barr