mlfishman

I am trying to get a friend of mine on a good fertilizer routine for his 55. The last time he had everything running decent, he had a major BBA outbreak and he had to clip out a lot of his plants. His tank was only 3 months old or so at the time. I dose the EI method in my tank, and I would like to get him on it as well but I dont want to give him ill advice. He has a 55 gallon, with 130 watts of JBJ Formosa PC Lighting (10000k), with pressurized co2 (he is usually way over 30ppm, and has gased many a fish to death on multiple occasions, he is a plant guy first and foremost). He has a 70% Flourite/30% gravel mix for his substrate and about 30-40 small tetras in the tank (black neon and cardinals). I was going to recommend a similar dosing schedule as mine to him, but I have over 4wpg in my tank and he only has about 2.4wpg in his, so I dont want him to dose crazily if his tank is consuming anywhere near that much. his tank is between moderately and heavily planted. I think if I kept the dosing schedule simple as possible it would work best (maybe only dosing macros 2x a week). He currently doses 2-3 caps of Flourish every other day, with 1 ppm Phosphate once a week (our tap water sometimes tests with P in it already), and only 5ppm of nitrates (if that) or so weekly and a lot of the plants in his tank were looking real pale. He just added a bunch of plants so I am trying to get him off to a ggod start with this last addition. Can someone make a suggestion for how much micros/KNO3/KH2PO4/k2so4/flourish iron we should be adding to this tank weekly?

MatPat

If it were my tank, I would be adding around 5ppm of NO3 3x a week and 1ppm of PO4 3x a week for a couple of weeks and adjust my additions up or down depending on plant growth and test results.

I haven't used Flourish products in a long time due to their cost. It's way too expensive when compared to CSM+B, especially with multiple tanks. However, the bottle suggests adding 5ml per 50g so I would probably add 5ml 2-3 times a week on days I don't add the PO4. I would increase it if I notice light colored new growth in Sag or any other fast growers.

As far as K2SO4, I wouldn't add any since the KNO3 and KH2SO4 provides what the tanks needs in terms of K. I would use it in cases where I don't need to add KNO3 to the tank though.

Adding macros Mon, Wed and Fri and micros on Tues, Thurs, and Sat while resting on Sunday is pretty simple