Tom
Thanks for the great website. I’ve been going through as much as possible on weekends and evenings since Greg Watson pointed me here a couple of weeks ago. If answers to my questions can be found elsewhere in the Barr Report, please just direct me there, I don’t want to take up your time answering the same question for the hundredth time…
I’m quite interested in your EI method and have started using it on my 50 gallon tank. I’m using the amounts from Greg’s EI Light listing which appear to scale up your 20 gallon EI example for larger volumes (2x in the case of the 40-60 gallon listing). I plan to use these standard values as a starting point then adjust down to my tank’s needs over time as you both suggest. It sounds as though many people have done this with success so I’m happy following in the steps of others and learning from their experiences.
Unfortunately, a shortcoming in my personality is that I need to know what I’m doing and why, even if I’m already planning to do it. (this drives my wife crazy and is probably why I’m and enginerd, I mean engineer
) So for example, I’m trying to understand what weekly NO3 concentration you are suggesting we add and the “target” concentration we are looking to build up to over time. I then want to compare that to the target range of 5-30 ppm that you list to get a better picture of where we are. Ultimately I’d like to understand what I’m doing, how it effects my tank, and how to scale up (or down) if I do other tanks in the future.
In your example you suggest adding ¼ tsp KNO3 3-4x a week (lets say 3x for convenience). The way I calculate it, over one week that would be adding :
¾ tsp KNO3 * 5cc/tsp * 2.11 gm KNO3/cc * 0.6133 gmNO3/gmKNO3 = 4.853 gm NO3
(4.853gm NO3 * 1000mg/gm) / (20 gal * 3.7854 L/gal) = 64.1 mgNO3/L = 64.1 ppm NO3
Did I do the math correct? If so, is 64ppmNO3 high since it will result in long term concentrations between 64-128ppmNO3? I would have thought 30ppm would be your target (which is about 3/8tsp per week rather than 3/4tsp) since it would put you between 30 and 60ppm which is right around the upper reaches of your guide range.
On another EI note, can you please summarize why you think the EI method works? Is the ultimate result that we end up with healthy plants that use up ammonia waste so fast that algae can’t get to it? I’m just a little confused as to why having an excess of nutrients would inhibit algae growth unless something they need is missing. In other words, if the food they need to grow is approximately the same as that need by SAMs and it’s present in excess, why doesn’t the algae grow just as well as the plants?
Thanks for you time and help figuring all this out.
Thanks for the great website. I’ve been going through as much as possible on weekends and evenings since Greg Watson pointed me here a couple of weeks ago. If answers to my questions can be found elsewhere in the Barr Report, please just direct me there, I don’t want to take up your time answering the same question for the hundredth time…
I’m quite interested in your EI method and have started using it on my 50 gallon tank. I’m using the amounts from Greg’s EI Light listing which appear to scale up your 20 gallon EI example for larger volumes (2x in the case of the 40-60 gallon listing). I plan to use these standard values as a starting point then adjust down to my tank’s needs over time as you both suggest. It sounds as though many people have done this with success so I’m happy following in the steps of others and learning from their experiences.
Unfortunately, a shortcoming in my personality is that I need to know what I’m doing and why, even if I’m already planning to do it. (this drives my wife crazy and is probably why I’m and enginerd, I mean engineer
In your example you suggest adding ¼ tsp KNO3 3-4x a week (lets say 3x for convenience). The way I calculate it, over one week that would be adding :
¾ tsp KNO3 * 5cc/tsp * 2.11 gm KNO3/cc * 0.6133 gmNO3/gmKNO3 = 4.853 gm NO3
(4.853gm NO3 * 1000mg/gm) / (20 gal * 3.7854 L/gal) = 64.1 mgNO3/L = 64.1 ppm NO3
Did I do the math correct? If so, is 64ppmNO3 high since it will result in long term concentrations between 64-128ppmNO3? I would have thought 30ppm would be your target (which is about 3/8tsp per week rather than 3/4tsp) since it would put you between 30 and 60ppm which is right around the upper reaches of your guide range.
On another EI note, can you please summarize why you think the EI method works? Is the ultimate result that we end up with healthy plants that use up ammonia waste so fast that algae can’t get to it? I’m just a little confused as to why having an excess of nutrients would inhibit algae growth unless something they need is missing. In other words, if the food they need to grow is approximately the same as that need by SAMs and it’s present in excess, why doesn’t the algae grow just as well as the plants?
Thanks for you time and help figuring all this out.