[quote=fish7days]Nice post Tom, and thanks for the insight. I for one, am not as in love as many, with water changes and will much rather prefer to tinker with solutions, standards and test kits. Pretty easy to suck some solution up in a syringe rather than carrying a bucket of water across the house!
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Only a novice would use a bucket.............the rest of the folks use pythons and never touch a bucket nor lift a bucket.
A hose can go a long long long way to a tank anywhere on your property.
Turn the faucet on, wait till it's filled/drained, turn off.
Ohh the agony........the pain, my wrist is damaged!
I figure if you are smart, you learn ways around work.
Automatic water changes also make the work, well, once set up, not any work at tall.
Water changes are less work than testing all the parameters and it provides a more stable condition for the plants.
You cannot test for everything.
You still need to top off the tank for evaporation if you do not do the water changes, and you still have mulm accumulation which needs siphoned off.
So you can keep the tank more tidy with water changes and it allows you to play and experiment much more with a dosing routine without a test kit.
Example, you can dose 50ppm of NO3 to see what effect it might have over 1-2 days time peroid.
Water changes are easy and effective. You can use test kits also, but they have their own issues and while people like to talk and discuss calibrations, accuracy, the reality is that after a few months, years or two, most stop doing that.
I've seen hundred's of hobbyists over many decades start out this way full of good intent and later become complacent in their testing/dosing.
I've personally run counter to this approach over time. I test more but with specific questions in mind such as what will happen if the NO3 gets above 50ppm for long peroids on fish, shrimp and plant health.
Then I know the limits, no matter if I do EI, PPS, RPL, Non CO2, whatever.
That knowledge is much more useful and helpful to aquarist wondering if higher NO3 at 30ppm is bad for fish, plants, shrimp etc.
It allows you to rule things out with much greater authority for any method and parameter combination.
But I know folks and have enough "help experience" well enough to know what they will and will not do when it comes to testing.
This includes dosing, testing, algae control, Tap water issues, you name it, not just PPS or EI.
But whatever goal they want to acheive, I'll help.
As you gain experience, you will come realize these things.
But for now, test, I went through that phase as well.
Some things folks have to learn on their own.........
The dosing solutions and table make PPS much clearer.
So you folks can try it and then make your own assumptions.
But if want to compare methods, you need to do each method that is known to work ....to high level to get an honest opinion.
But make sure you keep the CO2 at a good high ppm.
I cannot stress that enough. If you want to test and focus on accuracy and testing methods, focus on CO2, the other nutrients are easy.
Regards,
Tom Barr
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