kent vs seachem

Although Kent didn't publish the contents on all their bottles they had no problem sending me the list of contents by email. During AGA Kent gave out buckets of their Botanica line for free which I'm sure will trigger several people into trying their line. I haven't done so yet, at least not with the entire line, but having picked up a bucket for myself I plan to do so soon, I'm still missing a couple of products however to really try the entire line. From the comparison of contents Flourish does contain more items but of course we must also consider the ratios and which items are there as impurities or otherwise already present in tap water, making their presence of little importance to most of us. I think it's worth a side-by-side comparison, I've been using Flourish for a long time, TMG before that and like them both even though TMG contains less elements than Flourish, it still gave me very nice results, even better I felt when I was mixing the two.

Hard to make a call without trying them.

Giancarlo Podio

Raul-7 said:

At higher lighting levels plants grow faster,and thus nutrients are used up rather quickly. Many people have figured that you have to double or triple your micro dosing, at higher lighting levels, to prevent yellowing stems and stunted growth.

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Well they would also use the Mn, the Zn, Mo, Cu and other traces as well, not just Fe.

So adding a general trace seems to be a more hololistic approach.

The Kent and SEaChem lines have competed for some time, Greg is always one step ahead. The products are fairly = these days, but.....it's very difficuklt to say X is better than Y when it's a trace, this takes good control and time to gauge, no less than 3 weeks and several trials.
Even then.........
Traces have the least influences on growth, light=> CO2=N=>K=>P=> Traces.
I left out a few becuase those are seldom limiting. Mo is at the end of the scale.

Regards,
Tom Barr

OK, this time I have comments for (almost) everyone on this thread... Gpodio + Raul + Plantbrain

Gpodio,

U have an error in your execl - the manganese concentration in the kent product is 0.0431 and not 0.431% - big difference!!

I care now about micros - (I have other sources for NPK) so here's the main micros comparison -

Element Seachem fourish trace Kent Micros

Manganese 0.0850% 0.0431%
Molybdenum 0.0003% 0.0028%
Zinc 0.0169% 0.0030%

Now the question is whether flourish trace has enough molybdenum.


Raul,

In a high light tank I believe you don't need only to drive more Fe, but also more micros so why would you dose fe seperately?


Tom,

I follow your recommendations and when there's a problem the first thing I look is light, then co2, then NPK and only then micros. But this doesn't mean that the last on the list of micros has less importance for plant growth than say CO2. If there's 0 molybdenum then plants do not use nitrate. Yes - we need maybe one atom of molybdenum for zillion atoms of nitrogen but if this one atom is missing - plants can only uptake NH4. No?

Aviel.

aviel said:

Raul,

In a high light tank I believe you don't need only to drive more Fe, but also more micros so why would you dose fe seperately?

Aviel.

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The Fe found in most trace fertilizers isn't sufficient enough for high light tanks, those broad spectrum ferts such as Flourish, TMG, etc. have only enough Fe for dosing in low light tanks where Fe isn't used up that quickly by the plants. Dosing Fe separately gives you more control over how much you're dosing, rather than just dosing a whole bottle of Flourish just to suffice your plants' Fe needs. Also, plants take in more Fe than any other micro, it is usually the first micro to run low and thus you need to dose Fe separately to avoid any deficiency.

As for micros, Flourish, TMG, etc. would work in both low and high light tanks.

Just remember in high light tanks you need to double/triple the recommended dosage on the bottle, I mean only in terms of Fe and micros.

BTW, I don't think a plant will suffer if it doesn't get enough molybdenum..that's why they call it micros :wink:

Raul,

If I look here - http://fins.actwin.com/aquaticplants/month.9902/msg00087.html

then I can see a table with the ppm of each and every element in the plant - here it is -

Element mg/kg Relative # of Atoms
N 15,000 1,000,000
K 10,000 250,000
Ca 5,000 125,000
Mg 2,000 80,000
P 2,000 60,000
S 1,000 30,000
Cl 100 3,000
Fe 100 2,000
B 20 2,000
Mn 50 1,000
Zn 20 300
Cu 6 100
Mo 0.1 1
Ni 0.1 1

Now let's take just the biggest player in the micro domain: Fe vs. Mn

The ratio in the plant tissue is 2:1 for Fe:Mn.

If I use CSM+B then I get 6:53:1.87 which means -
if I want to dose enough Mn then I get extra Fe - So there's too much Fe here, you don't have to dose extra Fe, on the contrary - you have already more than enough.

Reagarding other fertilizers - like flourish - the iron and the trace are on seperate bottle so there's no meaning to 'dose more iron'. On the contrary flourish iron = 1.0% while manganese in flourish trace is 0.085% that's more than 10:1 for the advantage of the iron. So again the iron is already at high volumes and no need to sose 'more'.

If plants 'element cake' has nothing to do with dosing quantities - then what is the optimum percentage? Is it enough to make sure that there's "enough" trace elements in there or should we be carefull that one micronutrients won't block another one? Should we increase dosage of specific elements in the case of low PH? High KH? Till today I haven't seen any serious article surveying this for planted tanks.

As for the molybdenum - 'that's why the call it micros' is not an argument - they call it micros because plants need it in small quantities - if that one Mo atom is missing and I keep NH4 low in my tank and there's no NO3 then there's nothing for my plants to eat!! Absolutely nothing at all !!!

Aviel.

aviel said:

Gpodio,

U have an error in your execl - the manganese concentration in the kent product is 0.0431 and not 0.431% - big difference!!

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Where did you get that value from? I just want to make sure before I make any corrections to my table as these values were directly from Kent Marine.

I care now about micros - (I have other sources for NPK) so here's the main micros comparison -

Element Seachem fourish trace Kent Micros

Manganese 0.0850% 0.0431%
Molybdenum 0.0003% 0.0028%
Zinc 0.0169% 0.0030%

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I think you are comparing the wrong products personally. Kent has divided their macros into two main products (perhaps 3 if you want to include Vita for vitamis which would be a fair comparison when putting it against Flourish), Micro and Grow make up the Kent trace elements while Flourish (not trace, not iron) is the complete trace mixture from Seachem. Trace and Iron are supplements, just like Kent has a separate iron additive too. Some use these additives, some don't, I use Iron as well as Flourish but only because I got a big bottle of it for free, too many changes however to give an accurate opinion on any changes it has made for me, I will know better when the bottle runs out and I stop using it. Trace I tried but didn't notice any differences in my tanks, probably because my tap water already contains plenty of traces. But back to the comparison, another complexity is that the Kent traces are divided into 2 or 3 products, meaning that you can dose them separately and provide different ratios for each group of traces. So while it's valid to compare the ratios within the same bottle, the ratios between the elements found in different bottles are variable depending on the dose you choose to use. So in theory the Kent line should provide more chance for personalization, if that is required of course.

Now the question is whether flourish trace has enough molybdenum.

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Never asked myself this question, nor have I ever seen a molybdenum deficiency using any other product. But the dosed amounts are certainly different, actually they are for all the elements. While comparing the % of elements is useful, one must also take the recommended doses into consideration. Kent Micro says to dose 5ml per 10 gallons weekly, Flourish says 5ml per 60 gallons weekly. So the Mo difference if far greater than the table alone shows, which should hint to us that the Mo dosed with the Kent products is far above the minimum required by our plants. That said with the assumption that Flourish does not cause an Mo deficiency as I think enough of us use this product without ever running into such deficiency.

Giancarlo