Jeff_F

Roy, Thank you very much for the information. I do test my nitrates using both liquid and test strip methods. However, they always seem to disagree with each other! The liquid test does indicate nitrates in the 40-80 ppm range but the Aquarium Coop test strips show closer to 25. I was never sure which to believe but I've always felt the liquid test was more accurate. I would like to know how you calculated the numbers so I can do it in the future. I understand the 4.5 ppm daily dosage based on the Easy Green 3 ppm per 10 gallons of water. How did you compute that that will give me 40-80 ppm with dosing everyday and a 50% water change. I actually use RO water with Seachem Equilibrium. I use RO water because we are on a well system with a salt-based water softener and our water is not very good. We have a water purifier (RO) for our drinking water and I have a small RO unit that I use to make my aquarium water for water changes. I add 10 grams (about a teaspoon) to the 10 gallons of water for the water change. You said "based upon the dKH and dGH levels you suspect little calcium and magnesium" , so what values do you shoot for? I didn't think these levels were out of the normal range. Although I like Easy Green I've been looking at the 2hr Aquarist APT 3 complete and their APT E products. Are you familiar with them? They have gotten a lot of good reviews. Thanks for your help. Jeff

It is a 20 gallon tank with Aquarium Coop light set at 60% and I inject CO2. The water parameters are: ph - 6.6 GH - 6 dGH KH - 3 dKH i dose Easy Green at 3 ml per day and do 50% water change once a week (similar to EI dosing)

I am getting some leaves curling and looking splotchy like in the attached picture. Is this due to a nutrient deficency? If so…which one? thanks, jeff

Last Sunday I noticed that my CO2 regulator had the tank side pressure gauge pinned at 90 psi and I could not change it either down or up using the pressure valve. The needle valve was working so the bubble rate had not changed but I didn't think this was a good situation! It was an inexpensive regulator, about $60, so I guess I got what I paid for! I purchased a new Aquarium Coop regulator and it arrived today. So, how do I make the switch? I'm using a few more bubbles than you can easily count in the bubble chamber but I'd like to make the transition as easy as possible on the tank. Any suggestions on how to match the current flow rate....or just wing it?! I have been watching my daytime ph level and I thought I would just try and match it with the new regulator but this will take time. Will the day or so of working it out be detrimental to the tank and cause algae? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Jeff

Thanks for the responses.... @Mmiller2001 the reason I'm thinking of raising the KH is that this website and others say that a planted tank should have a KH range of between 4-8 dKH. I use RO water and add Seachem Equilibrium to add minerals and bring up the GH so I thought I need to do something about my low KH. I'm thinking it should be in the 6 dKH as well. @TOtrees asked about my water change. I do EI dosing so that requires a weekly 50% water change as part of the dosing schedule.

I have a 20 gallon planted tank and I use RO water because we have a water softener on our well water. I add Seachem Equilibrium to add back in minerals and have a GH of around 6 dGH. I also do CO2 injection. I monitor the CO2 by looking at the ph level with and without CO2 in the water. I'm looking for a Ph 1 drop. My KH, however, is only at about 3 dKH. I would like to raise the KH and have been looking at either crushed coral or Seachem Alkaline Buffer. I do have a couple of questions: - It has been hard to find crushed coral at the local fish stores but I can probably order some online. Aquarium Coop has it on back order. My question, however, is if it is slow acting and I'm doing a 50% water change once a week isn't the KH level going to fluctuate a lot? Wouldn't this be a bad thing? - An alternative is to use the Seachem Alkaline buffer. However, since it is a ph buffer, will it prevent the ph from going down while I'm injecting CO2? There will be CO2 in the water but will I be able to measure how much either with the ph method or with a drop checker? Still learning so any comments will be helpful. Thanks, Jeff

So you are using the PPS-Pro (EDTA+DTPA) Aquarium Plant Fertilizer Package and not the EI package? Looks like each has their own unique dosage schedule with 50% water changes. If I switch from Easy Green dosing to GLA, are you suggesting the package the PPS-PRO package and not the EI package?

I’ve watched a few videos and it looks pretty interesting. Apparently there are a variety of EI kits available. Do you use one of the kits and can you recommend a responsible brand?

Thank you very much for your feedback and suggestions. I will measure the ph drop per your instructions and let you know the results. A questIon about results. In your example, if the starting ph is 7 and you are looking for a 1 ph drop that puts it at 6 Isn’t that too low? Do you mean 0.1? I’ve heard about Estimative Index but just in passing. I will look into it per your suggestion. My recollection is that you actually ‘over dose’ so there is plenty of nutrients and then do a large water change once a week to reset everything. It sounds like you use this technique. Are you using Easy Green to get that high dosage or something else? Thanks for your help, jeff

My ph is 6.8 and KH is 3 dKH. According to an online CO2 chart that puts me at about 10ppm which is pretty low. Do you recommend that I increase my co2 injection? What about dosing the fertilizer? More or less?

I have a drop checker. It is green.

Help.....new algae forming. I believe I have some Black Beard algae and some green algae. I have a 30 gallon tank that is planted and has been looking very good with good plant growth. I have an Aquarium coop light set at 70%, do CO2 injection and do Easy Green fertilization with 3 pumps twice a week. I wanted to do some Red plants so I purchased some a week ago and put them into the tank. I put the lights up to 80% because of the red plants. A few days ago I noticed the algae forming. I turned the lights back down to 70% My phosphate and nitrates had been trending high prior to adding the red plants. Phosphate around 2 and nitrates around 50ppm. I did a approximate 40% water change which brought the them down to about 1 and 25ppm. I've looked online but the advise is confusing. One place says to add more fertilizer other places say to reduce fertilizer I'm not sure what to do at this point. Any suggestions?

Thanks very much for the information. I think I will switch to the more uniform dosing schedule and see what happens. I had not thought about dosing the new water coming into the tank during a water change to maintain the proper nutrient level. I'll adjust for this as well. Thanks! Why do you dose additional Iron? I've been measuring my iron and it is pretty steady at 0.5ppm. Do you have a lot of red plants that require the added iron?

I do a weekly water change (Sunday) of about 25%.

30 gallons

I have a question about fertilization. I have CO2 injection and an Aquarium Co-op light in my tank and per directions on the bottle I dose Easy Green twice a week at 3 pumps per dosing. Since this is 6 pumps per week, wouldn’t it be better to dose one pump per day to even out the amount of fertilizer (nutrients) in the tank rather than have them cycle up and down throughout the week?

I've been using my new Aquarium Coop LED for about a week now and things are looking good. I've tried some red plants in the past but they seem to lose their leaves and get very leggy. You can see one plant in one of the pictures. I would like to start adding some new red plants but I'm not sure I have the right light settings. The new light is set at 60%, I do CO2 injection and I dose with Easy Green and Easy tablets. I have no algae except for a little green algae on the glass that I remove with a razor blade once a week. The lights are on for 8 hours a day with a one hour siesta in the middle of the time. My water parameters are all in the normal range except for my nitrates which have been running about 60ppm for the past couple of weeks. Should I bump up my lighting if I want to start to get some new red plants? I should I raise the intensity until I start to see some algae? It is a 30 gallon tank that is 18" tall.