EI Revelation

laka

Prolific Poster
Jan 21, 2007
63
0
6
I just finished reading the sticky on EI dosing in solution. As usual highly informative.


Personally dosing in liquid form daily is much more to my liking than dry dosing every 2nd day, or was it every 3rd or....

Anyway, guess what. Did you know that EI solution daily dosing is 2.5*PPS PRO daily dosing?? with a little extra PO4 added, and weekly water changes 50%.


LAKA
 

rich815

Guru Class Expert
Jun 26, 2008
112
1
16
61
Albany, California
>>>>>.....than dry dosing every 2nd day, or was it every 3rd or....

Why are you trying to make it sound complicated? It's every other day. Is that so tough?
 

VaughnH

Lifetime Charter Member
Lifetime Member
Jan 24, 2005
3,011
97
48
89
Sacramento, CA
I still like my current form of EI: making solutions of macros and traces, dosing both of them every day, same dosage every day. The solutions are pretty weak, and a daily dose is pretty small, so I doubt that there is a problem with dosing both on the same day, just seconds apart. I use the dosing bottles where you squeeze a days dose into a small chamber and dump that in the tank. My bottles hold 16 doses of one ounce each, so about every two weeks I mix up new batches. If it gets any simpler I will fall asleep while dosing!
 

Tom Barr

Founder
Staff member
Administrator
Jan 23, 2005
18,702
799
113
laka;31638 said:
I just finished reading the sticky on EI dosing in solution. As usual highly informative.


Personally dosing in liquid form daily is much more to my liking than dry dosing every 2nd day, or was it every 3rd or....

Precisely.
Some are worse at that than others.
But if you miss a day, no big deal either.
Some find it easier to do a daily thing, others are worried, they like to leave for the weekend etc. Whatever gets you to dose a consistent manner.
That's a human issue however.
Same with making stock solutions, many are scare of that, that'swhy EI used teaspoons, something that was more familar and did not require scales etc.

The goal is to get folks ino the hobby, not scare them away with Chem lab:p and be cheap and DIY.

Anyway, guess what. Did you know that EI solution daily dosing is 2.5*PPS PRO daily dosing?? with a little extra PO4 added, and weekly water changes 50%.

LAKA

EI is PMDD + PO4 done without test kits and dosed 3x a week instead of daily in dry powder form. Liquids have a long history of dosing use. Way before Ed ever posted a thing.

PMDD + PO4 is PPS, something I have been quite nasty towards Edward about for some time. He's never given any credit to PMDD, check out the dosing and the routine and concentrations off the Krib.

Plants use the same things, only the rates changes.

So the methods are typically all going to be rather similar.
Just dose more ...less etc.

There's never been advice not to do daily or liquids with EI either.
Or that it cannnot be reduced of increased, this is just a starting point target that covers all the bases for nutrients. You can and should adjust from there.

Just running the EI routine lean, we use to call this West Coast lean as some folks with lower light here used less to account for less light that my tanks.
Common sense. They had dosed liquids and PMDD prior and simply added SeaChem Eq and PO4 that Steve and I had developed to add to PMDD.
This was in 1996 or so. Quite a few years and widely available on line to anyone owning a computer. We detailed out the process and the method and the history behind it. Ed never has.

I guess he just came up with it all without any back ground searching?
Ya huh...........sure.
Then bad mouths that same methods he never looked at as well?

Come on.

This goes beyond "which method is best BS" and is really an ethics and infringement of other folk's work and credit. I have no issues debating the merits of various dosing routines and concentrations relative to light and CO2. However, it becomes personal when folks steal from others, calling this their own.

That does not help the hobby.
Even the calibration and the use of good test kits and methods was a decade prior to PPS. Who came up with that? Not anyone associated with PPS.
Why not check out the history and look at PMDD and check those dosing routines and methods?

Then you'll know.

Simply going daily with liquids and cutting it leaner does not imply your own method. Nor does it imply that richer methods are worse either.
There is no evidence that they are, it's just more non limiting.

Look at PMDD here:

Practical PMDD Information

Then you can run the similar comparison and see what you think. There was a history associated with other methods, why specifically they had issues or not.
And some of the things that are said in PMDD have been falisifed resoundly since 1995. Things like excess nutrients and PO4. Almost entirely by myself.

PPS is rehash PMDD.
Some of the same claims against EI that PPS crowd had where the same old myths I addressed and showed to be false back then.
Some apparently have no idea how to do back ground research:cool:
But ....used the same background research to make a case for "their" "new" method.

Go figure.

Read up on that, see what you think. It is very widel available, any google or Yahoo search would have pulled it with Aquatic plants.

This is not PPS's idea, even EI's dilution math is there as an infinite series near the end of the article, that's not my idea either. I do not try to make myself look like I developed it etc either. I give folks credit for something I took and applied.

Many folks think because they failed at richer ppm's of nutrients, that it must be the nutrients fault. They fail for many possible reasons, mostly light and CO2 errors.

You will read ad nauseum about nutrients ppmm's, testing etc, but you will not read much if anything about measuring light or CO2 with the same vigor.

You will not read about the rates of growth and how this applies to light, CO2 and nutrients. You will not read about how to test for other locations of sediment based nutrients, only the water column.

These are things that are important, not tunnel vision and seeing the bigger picture. If you think something is true, and what someone else said is false, then set up a test to see.

Make sure you did not over look something.
Then if what PPS claims that excess PO4 = algae, or too much ppm's of whatever = stunted tips, poor fish health etc, and you add it and do not see this result.......you have question whether it's true, so you do it a few more times, and then you know it cannot be true, at least for the reason claimed........

Then you move on to the next most likely suspect or suggest why they had issues and you did not etc. You do not do this:

"here's our conclusion, let's see what facts we can find to support it"

I look first, observe and see what I can test or do to see if the result will potentially verify or falsify the hypothesis............then I see if I can make some logical reasonable common sense conclusions if I am lucky.

If everyone else was saying excess PO4 = algae and I could test that was false, well..........I'm not going to say and assume they are all right and I must be wrong.

The results suggest otherwise.

Same deal with EI. If your goal is fewer water changes and lower nutrients, then use less light, consider non CO2 or Excel etc. These are also better suited for folks concerned about Ecology and using less resources, electrical/light and CO2 are two huge resources, why all the focus on nutrients?

That's BS logic;)
Do not fall for it.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 

Tom Barr

Founder
Staff member
Administrator
Jan 23, 2005
18,702
799
113
rich815;31642 said:
>>>>>.....than dry dosing every 2nd day, or was it every 3rd or....

Why are you trying to make it sound complicated? It's every other day. Is that so tough?

I'm feebled minded enough to forget which day:eek:
So yes, daily might be helpful, it will not hurt, that much is certain vs every other day etc.

I think it's more of a convinence thing, dry vs liquid. Easier to dose larger amounts dry than small amounts.

But I hate dosing liquids, messy. So that's an issue, but not that big a deal.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 

bibbels

Prolific Poster
Aug 16, 2008
37
0
6
I find using a 7 day pill box works well for me. Easy to find and cheap at any pharmacy or walmart.

I have four of them and one day each month I measure out the dry ferts and load them. It doesn't take long. The ones I use are like in the picture below and each slot will hold enough macros for my 180gal.

I just open the slot I need for the respective day and invert the whole container over the sump. No thinking or remembering necessary. :)

Amazon.com: Apex 7-Day Pill Organizer, Ultra Bubble-Lok, 1 organizer (Pack of 2): Health & Personal Care
 

bibbels

Prolific Poster
Aug 16, 2008
37
0
6
Let's see if this image works, lol.

872_D_large.jpg
 

laka

Prolific Poster
Jan 21, 2007
63
0
6
"You will read ad nauseum about nutrients ppmm's, testing etc, but you will not read much if anything about measuring light or CO2 with the same vigor." Tom's quote.

Tom
i suspect the reason why this is the case is because hobbyists feel it is so much easier to measure nutrients than light in mmol? and CO2. The aquarium industry also heavily market test kits. As to their accuracy as stated on numerous posts here, they are moderate at best.

But let's take CO2. One-two years ago drop checkers were all the rage. A cheap accurate way of measuring CO2 using a standard solution. Now you're telling me that just because my solution is yellow does not necessarily mean i have 30ppm CO2. I understand you came to this conclusion when comparing DC's to CO2 electronic sensors? (from another site). Now i am advised to look at plant growth and fish stress to judge if i have sufficient CO2. It seems that we are going one step forward and two back.

If there was an easy or rather CHEAP way of measuring CO2 quantitatively then i am sure there would be just as much obsession with this parameter as there is with fertilizers.

LAKA
 

VaughnH

Lifetime Charter Member
Lifetime Member
Jan 24, 2005
3,011
97
48
89
Sacramento, CA
Another reason CO2 isn't obsessed over as much as fertilizers: If I am low on nitrates, I just dip out a spoon of KNO3 and dump it in the tank - instant solution. But, if I am low on CO2 things get complicated. I can increase bubble rate, but then I need to check the fish carefully every half hour to make sure they aren't suffering, but I have no real way to measure their suffering until they lose all color or start laying on the substrate. Even if I increase the bubble rate, I may just be adding CO2 to my living room from leakage and loss to the water surface. And, my dense stand of plants may never see but a fraction of that added concentration of CO2, even if I manage to get it.

Light is a lot easier, except that I don't have a PAR meter, and even if I did, and I find I have too little light I have few options to increase it without spending a lot of money. If I have too much, I can fix that but I might have to hang my light above the tank to do it, and that takes some effort. The "low hanging fruit" here is definitely the fertilizers.
 

Tom Barr

Founder
Staff member
Administrator
Jan 23, 2005
18,702
799
113
laka;31669 said:
"You will read ad nauseum about nutrients ppmm's, testing etc, but you will not read much if anything about measuring light or CO2 with the same vigor." Tom's quote.

Tom
i suspect the reason why this is the case is because hobbyists feel it is so much easier to measure nutrients than light in mmol? and CO2. The aquarium industry also heavily market test kits. As to their accuracy as stated on numerous posts here, they are moderate at best.

You are right on track!

But let's take CO2. One-two years ago drop checkers were all the rage. A cheap accurate way of measuring CO2 using a standard solution. Now you're telling me that just because my solution is yellow does not necessarily mean i have 30ppm CO2. I understand you came to this conclusion when comparing DC's to CO2 electronic sensors? (from another site). Now i am advised to look at plant growth and fish stress to judge if i have sufficient CO2. It seems that we are going one step forward and two back.

Well, you keep trying and evaluating things till you get decent results amongst everyone, or at leats a large %.

I can dial in a tank using my eye balls, I know many others that can, but cannot or else blame nutrients when I know it's CO2.

It's not an easy thing, no matter how you slice it.
If it does not work, or is impractical etc, I'm not going to hold on to it or defend it.

DC are okay, but they do have accuratcy and response time issues, they get folks overly confident that their CO2 is prefect or 28.5 ppm.

You cannot rely so heavily on ppms and the environmental parameter, you have to go beyond that and look at the biological part.

Ever seen someone who can grow anything but cannot discuss much about the Science? Talk to Amano sometime:) There are plenty of examples in farming, terrestrial landscape plants, house plants, flowers, Orchids etc.

What are they focused on?
Clearly not ppms.............

Plants?
Yes.

I see what the best growth parameters are from such examples, I am that type of person myself, I can grow things well without any background Science.

However, I attempt to use this Science to come back and recheck and see what concrete things I can say so we can reproduce things for those folks having trouble and that are "Brown thumbs".

Nutrients are fairly easy to control, dissolved gases that vary rapidly and within the system a great deal and are influenced by flow, tannins, poor measurement, that's a tougher thing to widdle down.

The CO2 meter is great, but it' 2000$. The other cheaper methods have trade offs. The eye ball method takes good observations and experience and to know what you are looking for. Even then, it still gets me here and there if I'm not careful.

I'm not one to blow smoke to say something nice and sweet. The truth is that it's not that easy to say what method is best to measure CO2, and eye balling is about the best method for me and quite a few other folks. This has issues also, folks gas their fish all the time with CO2, no matter what method they chose, this has never changed.

Well, if they go non CO2 then it no longer matters.

So this is not going to be some simple thing, it's a messy issue and one I keep coming back to to try and figure out and find a better solution to for myself and for other folks. I continue to try and learn more about it and tweak things.
Nutrients are just one part.

The light?
That's relatively easy, if you have a meter, these run about 200$ now. So that's within range of a group buy and share the device. Quite a few folks have done this recently.

But folks can debate that issue if they want also.

If there was an easy or rather CHEAP way of measuring CO2 quantitatively then i am sure there would be just as much obsession with this parameter as there is with fertilizers.

LAKA

Agreed, I will say you have a very good grasp on everything and why things are the way they are. So now with that, we can see where things should likely go in the hobby to help learn more about integrating light and nutrients, and finally CO2 into one cohesive model.

Then we can dial in a light intensity and duration(a light rate), with a good CO2 and good nutrient rate. Note, this will get us somewhat close, but we still have the biological factors to consider.

Plant species, plant biomass, % or each, stage of growth and bacterial status, flow, filtration etc, amount and frequency of pruning etc.

It's not just nutrients, but they are often blamed. So I've gotten poo pooed for years for defending nutrients and suggesting these other parts.

BBA aapears in every method, so do most all algae species. So it's very likelky some other thing.

So what I do is one at a time, but really well, try and see what I test and see what results I get. Then I rule something out(one less item to fret over), or tenatively accept it as a possible cause(does not mean it is). Then go back and see if I can disprove the potential cause, or confirm it(very rare).

So......this takes time and is a bit backwards to some folks, but you have to look at each thing. Then you can start mixing 2 or more things together and see where things go from one stable state to another.

It's never ending in some respects, but it helps get folks closer and closer to having less issues and understanding and mitagating the ones they have.

Sorry, there's no ultimate truth:cool:
That's a bit messy for some, the unknown is scary to many.

Take a good look at PMDD and think about what we do and know today.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 

SuperColey1

Guru Class Expert
Feb 17, 2007
503
1
16
50
Lincoln, UK
But let's take CO2. One-two years ago drop checkers were all the rage. A cheap accurate way of measuring CO2 using a standard solution. Now you're telling me that just because my solution is yellow does not necessarily mean i have 30ppm CO2. I understand you came to this conclusion when comparing DC's to CO2 electronic sensors? (from another site). Now i am advised to look at plant growth and fish stress to judge if i have sufficient CO2. It seems that we are going one step forward and two back.

1-2 years ago DCs were all the rage and they still are. Most of us have them.

Problem is though with circulation/flow.diffusion issues that people stick it on a wall and leave it there assuming that the reading is the whole tanks ppm. There is no problem with a drop checker's reading or its use now as there wasn't 1-2 years ago.

What people need to understand though is that the reading of CO2 (just as a reading of any nutrient) in one position does not mean the whole tank has this reading.

It's not hard to sort out though. If you were to test for nitrate (of course with a decent kit) you would take several samples from different areas. the same applies to the DC. You either get several and position them around the tank to get readings in all areas OR move it daily to keep on top of any changes. Just 1 plant growing larger over the space of a week changes the flow pattern and sometimes it can be quite a large change.

So in summary we still use DCs, they are really useful tools especially for the setting up stage but we need to be testing the whole tank not 1 area

AC
 

Henry Hatch

Guru Class Expert
Aug 31, 2006
179
0
16
When setting up a tank I normally move the DC from place to place to assess flow patterns. Over time as the plant mass increases I do the same thing. L've learned the importance of pruning not only to maintain good co2 distribution, but for the health of the plants as well.
 

laka

Prolific Poster
Jan 21, 2007
63
0
6
Mt DC is diagonally opposite to the CO2 source in m y 180g tank and is near the substrate. Theoretically this should have the lowest CO2 levels in my tank.


LAKA
 

SuperColey1

Guru Class Expert
Feb 17, 2007
503
1
16
50
Lincoln, UK
You are assuming that your flow is uniform in the tank so you are looking as the crow flies.

Think about obstacles that change the course of the flow; plants, hardscape, equipment etc.

The flow in your tank may get half way hit a barrier and then divert to the DC corner whilst missing the corner you thought would be higher CO2? Equally the flow may be directed downward somewhere so the higher area here may be lower.

This is one reason why we use higher lph in our tanks (I use 17x volume lph) as helps the circulation.

I also have 3 drop checkers (They are only £3 delivered these days from Hong Kong) I have the Diffuse in the right rear, and DCs in all the other 3 corners. All have the same lime green colour in them at lights on and bordering yellow when it gets to noon burst. I move them around every now and again because as the plants grow the circulation can change and this again may alter the CO2 concentrations.

AC
 

ntino

Guru Class Expert
Apr 29, 2008
104
0
16
Well, DC are not pinpoint devices, all they do is read the off gassed CO2, which is likely be the same throughout the tank unless you place the DC directly above the incoming bubbles.
To measure true CO2 concentration, you need a pinpoint device, at which point you will see you usually have far more CO2 in open water areas than you would near plant mass and on the leaves of plants.

Just because you have x100 lph of your tank doesnt mean that you would get even flow throughout plant mass, you need chaotic water movement that is usually implimented in reef tanks through wavemakes and other computerized powerheads


Just my 2 cent.
-Chris.
 

Mooner

Lifetime Charter Member
Lifetime Member
Jun 9, 2006
344
18
18
Colorado
DC's are a neat tool but you are better off learning without or beyond them, observing plants and fish instead of relying on color changes. I've been off DC's for months and the experience has paid off. I do recommend that you try DC's for learning sake though. Overall I add more CO2 than the DC's recommended and you get a real feel for what a particular tank can do.

Also my 2 cents
 

Tom Barr

Founder
Staff member
Administrator
Jan 23, 2005
18,702
799
113
We can say the same things about pH/KH also. Good learning tool, good to start with etc, but realize that they have limitations, same for DC's.

And the same for the CO2 dissolved light based meters, 2000-9000$ ranges.
I was looking at the YSI meter the other day and it uses the same frigging KH reference solution in the sensor tips for their probes as they use for the DC's. But then the color change in the chemicals is transfered to pH/CO2 reading and then they get a ppm reading of CO2 from there. They use the color of the light reflected off the solution as it changes color vs a traditional pH colormetric color change however.

The sensor caps are 125$, the probves are about 900$, cables is about 500-600$, or a complete kit, 8500$.

I like the other better for 2000$.

One method I am going to do is make a small chamber with nice seals to place a O2 and CO2 meter probe into so I can withdraw samples via some fine tubing and leave the water sample in the chamber.

This way I do not need to worry about response time since the CO2 and O2 gas will not change once removed and placed in the sealed chamber.

I think you can do this also for the Drop Checkers, but you'll still need to wait for a few hours and also be able to measure the Color in the indictator better.

You could modify the DC method and place a pH probe in the KH solution. Then measure that and assume a 2-3 hour response time. Be more accurate, but still painfully long delay and only measures one spot in the aquarium for CO2 ppm.

Like light, the CO2 changes through the aquarium a fair amount.
So I think we need a faster method to get response times to say a while lot about CO2 and light(easy with a light meter which are reasonable, 200-300$).

I really do not see an easy, cheap method to do it well. Eyeballs are the best overall thing we really have and that takes learning and time.

Also, recall you can reset nutrients easily to do a test and see for CO2.
I've found 95% of the issues we have are CO2 of the nutrients, light and CO2 parameters.

Rotuine mainteance, enough plant biomass, not too much disturbance etc seems to address the other issues, however, these should be raher obvious being aquarists, often they can be overlooked as well:mad:
We all have at some point or will again.

Regards,
Tom Barr