AaronT

It's my understanding that the Lights fertilizer does contain macros. They aren't dosed at first because they are plentiful in the substrate when it is first setup.

That being said I use a combination of Greg Watson and Seachem products to dose my ADA tank and it's looking great. I prefer to know what is going into my tank as well.

SUBORPHAN

i agree with the fact that people need to know what they are adding to their tank. however, if ADA released information about the ingredients of their products then people would just go and DIY them or reverse engineer them so i do not blame ADA at all.


on the other side ADG is only a retailer so they have nothing to do with the issue.

SUBORPHAN

from what i understand if you use the ADA range of ferts you dont need to add anything else to your aquarium.

when you say they are too expensive do you mean in US or Europe?

SnakeIce

If ADA was marketing to or developed for the US details as to what and how much is being added with each thing would be a sound marketing plan. But ADA was not developed for a US culture nor has it been changed for the US market.

Take for example the Nature aquarium world series of books. How much information is in those? Most of the text in those books is about the philosophy of life that the tanks arise from, not the how to of parts per million and ratios of one nutrient to another.

Am I curious? Yes. Does one have to know what is in those products to do a planted aquarium? No.

As I see it Amano has developed a system that allows one to focus not on the how, but on the why. Part of the nature aquarium's concept is to have a bit of natures wildness in a contained exhibit in your home. To reduce that wildness to NPK and ppm is to completely domesticate it. Only when nature is completely wild like an eagle does it have its full majesty.

Are we so caught up in controleing everything that we have forgotten how to see the magic of nature as a child does?

Freemann

Well sorry but to me the process is more important than the looks looks you can have a ton of looks if you know the process, repeatability meaning being able to do tanks like that with our cheap ferts is where my priorities lay. Anyway I would really like to know how low the ADA tanks are dosed it would be very interesting. By the way if I could get my hands in some ml of ADA ferts I could use my colorimeter to check what is added fert wise in distilled water, just some ml would do it.

niko

Freemann,

Can't you get all this shipped to Greece from Italy? Ordering from the Italian ADA site?

The "mystery" around the ADA products is annoying. Some of the products - Aquasoil is the best example - definitely have some special qualities and are worth the money. But a lot of the others are questionable. You can follow blindly what Luis Navarro tells you about starting a tank and keeping it healthy and you will have success too. But ADA sells you products and it will be only fair to have more info about them.

This hobby needs more information about the processes that take place in the tank. Fact is only a small number of hobyists are after artful aquascapes. The vast majority is not. Most people are fine keeping a clean planted tank. ADA's lofty, artsy, cool marketing goes over the heads of most people, including Asians. This is painfully evident in the ADA competition - most tanks are not aquascapes but just planted tanks. It goes without saying that ADA's cool marketing is not very well received in the US where we question everything.

US companies primary focus is saltwater/reef tanks. Planted tanks are still in the embryo phase. If there is any research about planted tank products it's minimal and barely supported by what practice shows. Of course everything is wrapped in sales pitches and advertisement but the facts remains - we know very little and the internet is the best source of information about planted tanks.

I sound harsh but read my conclusion and then judge:
High quality products, beautiful pictures of tanks to inspire AND detailed explanations on how all products work backed by real documented research. Will it make a difference on the algae in your tank? Probably not. But would you like that better than what we have now? Positively yes! Because it will answer many questions that we linger on now and will surely lead to moving this hobby forward - more toward creating and enjoying the beauty than discussing equipment and fertilization over and over again.

--Nikolay

SUBORPHAN

i dont understand why people are 'kicking off' about what is in the ADA products!! there is no 'mystery' at all about them. if people read around they will see that ADA does explain what their products contain and how they work. and the ADA products DEFINATELY work.

and Amano has contributed rather a lot to the hobby with his advice.

if people want to know how much of this and how much of that then basically to me that sounds like they want to know the formulae. and that means that they want to make DIY ferts at home based on that formulae. and that is definately bad for business. already a few companies have started to copy ADA's products. if you look at the lily pipes that a certain company makes you can clearly see that they are pure copies of ADA design.

ADA's marketing strategy clearly works, otherwise you wouldnt get so many people interested in their products.

the fact that some tanks look likeplanted tank instead of an aquascape has nothing to do with the products. it has very much to do with experience. for Amano tis is not just a hobby ut rather a part of his life.

jsenske

I do not have any of the ppm-type information that you seek. It is simply not the ADA marketing philosophy/approach to get too deep into offering all that, though I am sure that if I inquired I could get it from them. Honestly I am not really that interested in that side of it though. We don't sell a lot of the liquids at this point anyway, probably because there are some solid alternatives out there. I am absolutely thrilled with the results on tanks where I do use them, for what that is worth. The people that have tried them have ordered again, for what that is worth also.
ADA's idea-- as I have always understood it-- is to make Nature Aquariums/planted aquariums accessible to more people-- starting with their core/base market in Japan. They seek to simplify rather than confuse, so for their particular purpose, it's easier to simply say "add however many ml per liters of aquarium water" etc. The idea is to give non-hobbyists access to a straight-forward approach to one means of success. I understand the more sophisticated hobbyist wanting more detailed info., but the line is just not at that point yet in terms of the packing, instructions, etc. being geared toward such a level of aquarist. Maybe it never will be, I just do not know right now. Sophisticated hobbyists that are perhaps less concerned with such things (ppm, etc.) because they have sort of figured out how to do things without that info. and are now onto really focusing on art, layout, design (aquascaping) certainly find immense usefulness with the line as well, as eveidenced by the number of top aquascapers worldwide who use ADA almost exclusively.
SeaChem's roots are on the marine side, so it is a way different philosophy/ approach. Plus, those guys are really a bunch of scientists/chemists, etc. So they use their strengths to market and sell their given products, which work quite well I might add.
If that type of info is really important to you (ppms, etc.), then ADA is probably not the best choice for you. Not because it won't work, but because you seek a different approach/philosophy, which is just fine.
Again, the idea is to make is more accessible to more people, most of which don't care much about ppm and the like. They want to pull off as nice a layout as their skills permit, and bring the beauty of live aquatic plants into their space. Indirectly, that is exactly what stands the most to grow the hobby interms of making cool plants and products and the like more readily available at your LFS and elsewhere. Volume interest/demand yields greater supply. Maybe that is good and maybe it doesn't matter much, but me personally, I'd love to see the hobby grow becasue I think planted tanks stand to be much more accessible than reef tanks, which is where the majority of the market has been in the U.S.
That's the long-winded reason WHY the information you seek is not readily provided. It is not due to a desire to hide it or shroud it in mystery or anything.

Freemann

Yes I can and prolly I will order the smallest quantities together with some aquasoil to try (it is always money that stops me in this endeavors).

Well I don't see how the inclusion of the contents will interfere with the use of the ferts from the people that are not interested on them, they could just ignore them. Also allow me to say that walking in a blind aley does not guaranty in the long run that the tank will be always algae free and healthy even if ADA products are involved even from their own perspective in the long run something more should have to be added from one of the ferts and not knowing what is added does not help at all on this process. Also knowing the amounts that are added could prolly prove that Amano line is really going for a lean column ferts regime, and that in combination with the lush growth of plants in this tanks would prove something of the use of the substrate as the main source for the ferts and also prolly raise questions on the long run of this tanks (things like after the ferts in the substrate are depleted how much N P or K and the rest does the chemists in Amano labs consider enough to sustain a healthy tank?)
Even if ADA is prolly not the best choise their fertilizing regime principle is of real interest to lot of us.

I could not agree more. But I really wonder has any real research ever have been done? I see PO4 products coming in the market only because we started talking of the need of P not because they made any research. And anyway what is the innovation in a NO3, or trace product? very little.

jsenske

So, ok, I am not sure what the question is now. Is it just that you want to know ppm, active ingredients, etc.? I can certainly speak to ADA about this, but with such a tiny market outside of Japan for them, please realize it is expensive to relabel/change packaging, etc. So don't be surprised if that is not an immediate option. The simple providing of information is easy enough, though.
I have forwarded the oringinal thread post to ADA and requested an answer to each and every question.Rest assured there's nothing to "hide", so I will be anxiously awaiting a reply that I can promptly post here. If you have any other questions of a similar nature, now may be a good time to post them so I can get them in all together and put some if these issues to rest for a while.

Also, in thumbing through AquaJournals, both old and new, I must say there is a wealth of this type of information offered. Now I don't read Japanese fluently, but I have learned to interpret the general direction and content of articles, and there is a lot of technical-type articles happening there. ADA has only been really active in the US market for a year, so let's give them some time to get a better sense of the market will demand in order to have confidence in the products. I actually appreciate this input and will definitely see to it that it is conveyed in proper proportion to ADA when discussing such topics as "what people outside of Japan need/want to know".