Neal

I've been dosing my 54 corner tank with a non CO2/low light/minimal water change method I learned about on the Barr Report. You dose small amounts of Seachem Equilibrium, phosphate and KNO3 weekly, with no CO2 input, about 1.5 watts per gallon and water changes only as necessary to deal with algae or after major rescapes. More information on it can be found here: http://www.barrreport.com/articles/4...2-methods.html

It has worked out so well, I'm curious to see if it would improve plant growth in my 150 gallon pond. I think I should dose a lower amount of nitrate as plant debris from nearby plants adds a fair amount of decaying matter, but I think the potassium, phosphate, iron, calcium and other nutrients could really perk up the plants. Am I crazy or do others think this could work?

My other question is how many watts per gallon does the sun provide filtered through an lilac bush on one side and an elm tree on the other?

MatPat

It may improve plant growth or it may cause an algae outbreak. I'm not sure since I have never had a pond but if it was me, I would give it a try I would definitely start out on the low side if you do decide to add some ferts to the pond. A lot of the plants that grow in nature seem to have much lower levels of fertilizers than are present in our tanks though fertilizer runoff from fields can be a factor in some places.

As far as wpg provided by the sun, who knows. The sun's output can be measured in lumens if you want to try and compare that to your tank lighting but there are many factors such as shade from nearby objects like your lilac bush, clouds, haziness, etc that would need to be taken into consideration. Also, sunlight rarely will hit your pond at a the same angle that your tank lights do...for the majority of the day, the sun will not be directly over your pond but will instead come at an angle causing both reflection and refraction of the light. Your tank lights sit directly over the tank for the whole photoperiod and probably have a lesser amount of reflection/refraction.

MrSanders

I could tell you first hand of a success story, of dosing a pond. We have a 1000 gallon pond, heavy plant load and about 8 Koi between 8 and 15 inches. I first got the idea when many of the plants were clearly just surviving. As it has been mentioned it would probably be a good idea to stay on the low end of things to start, but I can tell you from expierence that dosing a fair amount isn't always going to give you problems.
Our pond gets direct sunlight for 8+ hours a day, there are two lillys that get heavy fert tab dosing. After spring has gone underway and plants start to come back stong I add 10ppm nitrates, 2-4ppm phos. and 15-20ppm pottasium once ever week to two weeks. Pond plants can suck up nutrients like no tomorrow, once we hit the middle of summer it isnt uncommon at all to barley get a reading of nitrate 2-3 days after ferts are added. Give it a go, start small and work up, you will definantly see an improvement in plant health. Another tip I can give you is that salt really helps koi health and reduces and keeps algae in check big time. We add around 7 lbs of salt at the start of each year, and usually add a bit more back in when water is changed. Good luck

Neal

I have been dosing this tank since the middle of June now and the results have been impressive. All plants are doing much better than in previous years and there is very little algae.