Equilibrium or dose individual nutrients for deficiency

[nic]

I could use some advice.  I'm trying to tackle some plant deficiencies that have been going on for months. I increased my fertilizer once and before I do it again I want to see if that's the correct route or if I should consider dosing individual nutrients or Equilibrium.

Plants are all actively growing.  But some have pinholes with yellow edges. Some show very slight yellowing on newer leaves.  A couple have large holes leaving just the edge of the leaf.  I do have some algae on the mature anubias leaves, maybe GSA.  Snails and shrimp take care of it but it comes back.

My tank is 5 gallons. 
I have a Nicrew C10 light, supposedly the par is 50 at 12".  I keep it at 48% a few inches above the water for 7hrs a day.

I use Easy Green liquid fert with my weekly water changes with tap and again halfway between changes when I topoff with distilled or RO.
I use root tabs every other month.

These are the main plants showing problems,
*Frogbit
*Crypt lucens
*Crypt beckettii
*Anubias nana petite
*Anubias nangi
*Java fern windelov

Other plants in the tank include duckweed, anacharis (floating), micro sword, dwarf hairgrass, buce brownie ghost, and pogostemon stelletus.

Nitrates I THINK are 10ppm. Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the orange/red of the 10 and 20 on the kit. 
pH 7.8 (varies between 7.4-7.8)
GH 161ppm (fluctuates sightly)
KH 71ppm

Would it be better to just up the Easy Green dosage?
Or dose additional nutrients like potassium, iron or whatever else I need and see how that goes?
Or do half of my water change with distilled and Equilibrium which would add a little of everything?
 

[Pepere]

You have plenty of gh, though you dont know what the calcium magnesium ratio is.  I would not dose Equilibrium to your source water, though if you were to use ro water, you could use Equilibrium.

 

Equilibrium adds calcium and magnesium in an appropriate ratio and it also provides potassium and iron.

you could get a calcium test to tell what portion of your gh is calcium.

livestock waste and fish food provides nitrates and phosphorus but not potassium.  Iirc, Easy Green might be a little light on potassium.

you can mix equal parts of tank water with water that is nitrate free and test that resultant mix for nitrate levels to clear up ambiguity of test results.  Ie, if a 50% dillution looks very similar color, than your original test was likely closer to 20 ppm than 10.  If it is obviously paler and close to the 5 ppm swatch than tank is closer to 10 ppm…

I like to front load my dosing after doing a 50% water change.  I target dose about 20-30 ppm nitrates.  In essence if my tank currently has 10 ppm nitrate before dosing I will add 6 ml of Easy green per 10 gallons of water in tank. That will get me to close to 30 ppm. 
 

It is preferable to add  Easy Green to slightly acidic water as the form of iron in Easy Green gets bound up in alkaline water and plants can not utilize it.

 

If it was me and just a 5 gallon tank I think I would dose my water change water with equilibrium and RO water and increase Easy Green dosing with 50% water changes weekly.  

Edited January 20 by Pepere

[nic]

@Pepere that's a great about mixing the nitrates to compare to each other.

If I use Equilibrium and distilled (easier to get than RO) should I mix that to the same gh and kh levels that I currently have?

And are you suggesting to just do distilled and equilibrium and not use tap water anymore?

Or could I split the difference and mix half of my water change with a solution of distilled/equilibrium and the other with tap as usual?

[Pepere]

There can be people who would do differently, and I am not arguing they would be wrong, but it is a small tank at 5 gallons.  I would just mix up water change water and dose it with equilibrium to desired GH target.  personally I would dose to about a GH of 5 degrees.

Per label 1 tablespoon weighs 16 grams and raises 20 gallons of water 3 degrees gh.  So, 1 teaspoon would weigh a little over 5 grams and raise 6 gallons about 3 degrees.

And a hair under a teaspoon would raise 3 gallons about 6 degrees. Etc…

I would not personally be raising KH much if at all.  I used to add Alkalinity booster to my very soft tapwater to raise kh from 1 degree to 6, but I have ceased doing such and basically just water changing it lower over time.  Lowering your Kh over time will also allow ph to lower so that the iron in Easy Green becomes more accesible.

So I personally in your situation just use distilled or RO, dose it with Equilibrium to target GH and use that solely for water changes.  And  dose easy green to a target Nitrate level.

 

[nic]

@Pepere I appreciate your suggestions. One more question. Would this change in water cause my tank to go through any adjustment periods?

[Pepere]

Any time you alter your water parameters, nutrition etc, the plats will need to do work reconfiguring their leaves to optimize for the new conditions.  This takes 2-3 weeks.  You will slowly be changing things over about a month if you do 50% water changes weekly.  The first change will be the biggest.

 

Try to do each change as closely the same as possible..   give the plants 6 weeks before evaluating how well it works.  Change will first show up in new growth…

[nic]

On 1/20/2024 at 12:01 PM, Pepere said:

Any time you alter your water parameters, nutrition etc, the plats will need to do work reconfiguring their leaves to optimize for the new conditions.  This takes 2-3 weeks.  You will slowly be changing things over about a month if you do 50% water changes weekly.  The first change will be the biggest.

 

Try to do each change as closely the same as possible..   give the plants 6 weeks before evaluating how well it works.  Change will first show up in new growth…

Thank you for the help!

[nic]

Bought some distilled to work out the dosage of the Equilibrium.
First try got to 6dGH which brought the pH to 7.  I didn't think Equilibrium raises the pH but prior to using it the distilled tested at 6.4pH.

Out of curiosity I decided to test my tap water and it actually came out to 5dGH.
Not sure how my tank water is nearly 2x that.