Ammonium in Fertilizers

[Lennie]

Hey guys,

hope everyone is doing well.

Lately I have been trying to find a good all in one fertilizer that I can use in my 33g considerably heavily planted tank. The tank is on low stock side, only 2 mystery snails, 2 nerites and 16 pygmy cories. It has tropica aquasoil and root feeders have been doing pretty good so far. 
 

I currently dose seachem comprehensive twice a week.

I have always been using Seachem comprehensive and I dose Equilibrium with all water changes, potassium from time to time. But I normally kept my tanks a bit overstocked and feed variety of fish food, so always had phosphorus and nitrate in the tanks. But this one is on low stock side.

As I am aboutta finish my bottle, I have been looking for a Tropica’s all in one Premium and Speciliased Nutritions, as I liked their aquasoil a lot by now. When I ordered specialised version, I saw that it clearly stating ammonium in it.

When I checked Seachem nitrogen, it says it has ammonium too but in a form that does not damage live stock???

My ph is 8.2 so normally I wouldn’t come by ammonium and I am afraid of potentially dosing anything toxic to the tank. So I am planning to  go for Tropica Premium one with equilibrium instead.

Any idea about ammonium dosage in high ph tanks with fertilizers? Do these ammonium can potentially damage livestock in high ph like mine, or in general even without a high ph? 
 

Tropica premium version:

 

Tropica specialised version (advertised for heavily planted tanks):

 

So current plan is going for premium version + keep dosing equilibrium with water changes. But I think I may not have enough N and seems like all available to me comes from ammonium.

What do you guys think?

P.S: we don’t have ACO here just in case anyone would suggest easy green. No easy green here sadly

Edited February 16, 2023 by Lennie

[knee]

Majority of plants consume ammonia before they would consume nitrates but I would still be cautious using that as it can cause an algae bloom or harm livestock if used incorrectly. 

TSN uses ammonium as their nitrogen source but it could be in some complex compound. Tropica stated that they use 0.65% ammoniacal nitrogen per gram which isn’t safe but they might be using a combination of Urea, Ammonium and Potassium Nitrate. 
 

Tanks fertilized with urea or ammonium are more sensitive to trimmings. Let’s say you trim 50% of the plants, the dose you’ve been using for this might be too much due to the reduced plant mass and might be too much for the system. So after every trim you’d have to adjust your dosing for the tank until the plants grow and can absorb the regular dose. Lean dosing is a touchy and difficult subject. I’ve been keeping planted tanks for years and I don’t even bother with that topic much. This is why I prefer low tech.

 

The safest way to dose TSN is if you break down the dosing into smaller amounts to give your plants and bacteria sometime to absorb them without it being detrimental to the livestock. 

[Lennie]

Thanks @knee!

I guess I will go for premium version, it seems like the safest option, as I already dose Equilibrium and have extra potassium on hand. I keep shrimp there too, and I don’t wanna risk it.

Also tropica aquasoil seems to have N in it, so I think I can handle with dosing premium version to the tank and N/P coming from fish waste/food. The only water column feeders I have are a small java fern and some water lettuce/frogbit. Others are all mainly root feeders.

So I assume this type of ammonium don’t turn into ammonia and have increased toxicity with higher ph and temp?

 

 

[knee]

On 2/16/2023 at 10:46 PM, Lennie said:

So I assume this type of ammonium don’t turn into ammonia and have increased toxicity with higher ph and temp?

They could still be harmful with high ph but if you're tank is mature enough it can probably handle the ammonia from the fert but I'd still be cautious about using it. If I was gonna use TSN, I'd dose half of the recommended amount for a couple of weeks or until I see any changes in plants, whether they're growing or struggling and adjust accordingly. If I wanna be super safe, I would split the amount I need for the day into two or three and dose them throughout the day. 

If you're trying to achieve certain levels of nutrients in your tank then you'd have to keep adjusting the ferts you use until you find one that completely works. If using just the premium will work for you then I suggest just using that but if you notice deficiencies, you can still use TSN, but dose carefully and observe more closely. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 2/16/2023 at 2:16 PM, Lennie said:

I currently dose seachem comprehensive twice a week

I'm very sorry. Their directions make me crosseyed. 😂

On 2/16/2023 at 2:16 PM, Lennie said:

What do you guys think?

I forget where I've heard it first but there's two things going on here...

Ammonia vs ammonium is one conversation and the other being whether plants want nitrates or ammonia as their food source. 

I've heard that ammonia is easier for the plants to use quickly compared to nitrates, but that's beyond my knowledge to try to explain all of that.

On the ammonia vs. Ammonium debacle, the second one should be safe for the tank to dose in. I can't speak to which is higher concentration, but the darker bottle seems like the one to go with, if anything just dose in half the recommended dose. If you have a lot of stems, I'd lean towards darker bottle.

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by nabokovfan87

[Lennie]

On 2/21/2023 at 12:13 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I'm very sorry. Their directions make me crosseyed. 😂

Understandable! I just create my own dosing pattern tbh 😄 and just making sure not overdosing at once, it helps me to know overdosing limit 😄

I ended up getting Tropica Premium Nutrition. As I mentioned I already have aquasoil as it has N 0.332%, P 0.094% and K 1,090 from the macros, it seems good for now as I mainly have root feeders. I dose Equilibrium with water changes and have a seperate Potassium bottle in case needed.

I've also increased the tankmates to 16 pygmy cories, 2 mystery snails, 2 nerites, and 4 red lizard whiptails, and shrimps in total, so I feed the tank more often as most of them are juviniles and snails do poop A LOT. I think I will have good amount of N and P coming from that perspective for floating plants and java fern.

Also I have around 10-20 nitrate in my tap water, so I add nitrate with water changes anyway, but I keep the water changes minimal, around %15 once a week at this point. So not a huge addition but still something.

Let's see how it will go