# Epic successful failure.....



## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

ok so i know now that you cannot over fert your tank.... allow me to explain. 


I just recently got a new marine magic auto doser. (this was not the dosers fault, it was mine)
and with tthis autodoser i am dosing using the EI method of dosing for a 50 gallon tank. everyday the doser doses the correct amount at 1200 sharp. NPK and micros. 

I had a one gallon mixture of NPK good for the next 4 months. in one week the milk jug was empty......:scared:


2x150 mh 8000k 
huge jebo filter
autodoser
10#co2 bottle 
inline co2 diffuser
50 gal tank

the tank was a little on the yellow side and i thought it might be the wood leaching tannins again. then i was like hmmm that stopped a few months ago. then i looked beneath the tank to see if the filter was getting funky. nope then thats when i saw it a shrivled up milk jug. 

then i looked at my tank to see for algea....NONE none what so ever not a speck. not on the glass or plants or substrate or equipment. AND the plants looked better than they had in months. 

what had happened was i did not leave the lid loose enough to allow the air exchange to take place as the ferts were being used so as the bottle expanded and contracted it just ended up emptying itself. i then tested this theory using one gallon of water. the same thing happend. then i allowed a small hole to allow for air exchange to replace the missing volume of water and it worked just fine. 

so pros and cons

successful
to know that over ferting will not cause algae or adversly effect your ecosystem or fish or inverts

failure
not knowing to leave air vent in bottle and im out half of my stash of dry salts. 

however i think it was worth it to find this out. 

Thanks
Elliot


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

Interesting post. That is what Tom Barr has been saying for years....


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

Excellent point tex gal...ment to say that in my first post


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## Skizhx (Oct 12, 2010)

Wow, if that was me I'd be literally running across to and from the bathroom carrying 5gal buckets of water in each hand. >_<

I think that while you've shown that short-term high levels wont have a negative effect, I also think you may have gotten lucky and just caught it in time before anything bad happened, considering you dosed about 100ppm of NO3, which obviously isn't good for fish or inverts.

Thanks for sharing though, and hopefully this will save someone else from experiencing this with their auto-doser.


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## Aquaticz (May 22, 2009)

Actually given Elliots honestly I'd give it a go. Where did you get the auto doser doubleott05. Any other words of wisdom? Thx U


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

from ebay. 


test test test that doser till you get the right dosing amount. i spent about 3 hrs testing that thing till it was perfect


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

7 days with that high no3 i would not consider to be short term givin the amount of ferts on here. . i dont know if it dosed it all the first day or the last however everything was fine.... including the shrimp. 

perhaps tom barr will chime in here soon

thanks
Elliot


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## Skizhx (Oct 12, 2010)

It's definitely reassuring to know what sort of accidents people have gotten away with, that's for sure.


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## Treetom (Jan 23, 2011)

Did you have algae before the over fertilizing of the tank? I mean did this kill some of it off or all of it?


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

I've severely overdosed P before. And I mean severely - the test could not read the concentration. I estimated it to be above 40 ppm. How much above 40 I do not know.

At that time I had about 60 species of plants in a 180 gal. tank. Also about 5 other species in another tank. There was no algae in sight at any point. N, K, Traces/Fe were at normal levels. 2-3 wpg for 10 hrs/day, CO2 in both tanks.

In both tanks all plants with the exception of Java Moss just stopped growing. The Java Moss grew but pretty slow. Everybody else was basically frozen in time. Stupid me unknowingly kept this situation for about 45 days. 

To me overfertilizing a planted tank does not necessarily mean algae showing up all over. But I do not think such a system is a good idea. Plants do grow well with more food, yes. But if anything gets out of wack the problems literally kill you. And for a very short time - 2-3 days. From my experience having a nutrient rich system means one thing - you better maintain this tank like a clockwork.

--Nikolay


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

ya i had some algae

here is a thread on TPT with the same topic

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/fertilizers-water-parameters/133921-epic-successful-failure.html


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## TheKillHaa (Sep 15, 2007)

EI is not about overdosing nutrientes, is about good manage of CO2. 
understand that, and you will solve many issues with this method.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

EI has nothing to do with co2. i mean yes you need co2 but there are no explicit directions with the use of co2.


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## DVS (Nov 20, 2005)

I may be misreading what you meant to say but EI is all about CO2 and light. The fert "recipe" only provides a non-limiting nutrient environment so one knows that these can be eliminated as a problem source and can concentrate on CO2 and light.


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## TheKillHaa (Sep 15, 2007)

DVS said:


> I may be misreading what you meant to say but EI is all about CO2 and light. The fert "recipe" only provides a non-limiting nutrient environment so one knows that these can be eliminated as a problem source and can concentrate on CO2 and light.


much better explained than me.
ferts are the easy part, manage of co2 and light is the tricky...


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

you guys need to read the EI thread... from what i have read EI is all about unlimited dosing... CO2 just needs to be constant and tweeked to perfection.


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

I think the issue with EI is that it does talk about non-limiting ferts BUT it assumes that your light and CO2 is balanced. Without CO2 you would not be dosing EI. If you have read on the Barr Report about the EI dosing you will see why CO2 is the most important issue, at least according to Barr, who, as I understand it, is the author of EI dosing.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

i guess from my perspective with pressurized 10# co2 its a non issue for me. you see i have 6wpg and co2 system so ei is just right for me..


well said tx gal


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## Emily6 (Feb 14, 2006)

So given this sensitive equation, maybe my recent problem is lack of ferts, not too much light... I just recaped my tank (which previously had minimal algae) and cut the biomass by 2/3. I thought I should cut the ferts down too until things grew in- is this thought crap?

Now I have what looks to be enough hair algae to fashion a whole cast a muppets! I cut the light a few hours and maintained half doses of ferts- it got worse! So now I'll try the opposite- original EI regime of everything- like I did before I rescaped- and see what happens.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

to put this in perspective emily6

some think that EI is a joke
and that PPS pro is god
and vice versa 

they also think that EI is a waste of ferts 
and PPS Pro is not

i have found what works for me (dry salts are cheap in perspective of liquid ferts)

ferting is all about what works for you and your tank. everybody has different tap water. or they might use RO. so every situation is different. 

EI might work for one cause his water chemistry is different where as somebody using RO uses pps pro and never dose a water change. 

hope that helps

oh and for my two cents i advise you to dose more and do water change more keep your lighting between 8-12hr photoperiod


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## Emily6 (Feb 14, 2006)

I get all that I'm just saying it's hard to suppress the impulse to blame ferts for being too abundant- not insufficient. 

Knowing that my tap water didn't change, I can only look to the two things that did: lower fert dosing and fewer plants. 

At this stage in the game, I've almost regained my tank's original biomass. So it's really just lower dosing- I also use dry ferts btw.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

oh ok


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## bsmith (Dec 13, 2006)

Doubleott just reinforced what Tom has been saying for years. It is nice to experience it for yourself isn't it?

To everybody else. EI is all about overdosing ferts to make sure you are not deficient in any of the categories (macro and micro) and assumes you have sufficient amounts of co2 in the tank. Drinda was correct saying that really you shouldn't need to be dosing EI unless you have brighter lighting on the tank. 

Still though co2 is the most underdosed fert in the hobby, Barr none.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

i have been guilty of co2 poisoning my fish.... more than once


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## Left C (Jun 14, 2005)

doubleott05 said:


> ... and with this autodoser i am dosing using the EI method of dosing for a 50 gallon tank. everyday the doser doses the correct amount at 1200 sharp. NPK and micros. ...


Are you saying that you dose both NPK and micros everyday at 1200?

You should dose NPK one day and micros the next.

If your micros' chelator is a good one, maybe you can pull it off and dose both daily at the same time.

If they are all mixed together, macros and micros, you may have problems. It depends on the chelator.

If you want to dose macros and micros everyday, dose them several hours apart.

I hope that I misread this somewhere along the line and you are not dosing your ferts together at the same time.


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

I don't dose macros and micros at the same time. I dose dry not reconstituted. As a matter of fact until I switched to Iron Chelate 11% DPTA (Diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid) Chelating Agent, I had my iron precipitate out of the water even on a different day. I tried Seachem's iron and others and only this product worked well. Now I never have that issue. I can even dose on the same day about 30 min later and all is well.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

the reason i can dose them at the same time is because it is already pre mixed..... and in small amounts

.... never had a problem and plants grew fine

you have to understand they are being dosed 15ml into 50 gallons of water. its not concentrated enough to counter act each other.


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