May I overdose Flourish ?

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rasbora

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
May 5, 2011
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I have a heavily planted 75 tank with DIY CO2. I dose flourish twice a week. Now I have grass (unknown type) covering half of the grave and somr other plantsl. I saw constant and rapid growth from the grass, however I saw a slowing growth and yellowing old leaves of other plants. I think the rapid growth of the grass took a lot of nutrients, leaving less nutrients for other plants. Is it possible to dose more Flourish or is it better for adding a specific nutrients (N,P or K) ?
By the way my CO2 level is green on drop checker.
 
I would think that you're probably seeing a nitrogen deficiency. What is your nitrate reading? You most certainly can overdose flourish... which would result in lots of algae. Since flourish is low in nitrogen, and the description of the issue, I'd suspect that first. Easy enough to tell. It's the others that are more difficult to pinpoint.
 
mfdrookie516 said:
I would think that you're probably seeing a nitrogen deficiency. What is your nitrate reading? You most certainly can overdose flourish... which would result in lots of algae. Since flourish is low in nitrogen, and the description of the issue, I'd suspect that first. Easy enough to tell. It's the others that are more difficult to pinpoint.

Thank ypu for your reply. My nitrate between 20-40 ppm before weekly PWC.
 
Are you using you pH solution or the one that came with the drop checker. Im skeptical of a diy setup making a drop checker green.

Sounds like textbook nitrogen deficiency, although phosphate can often present in a similar way.
 
aqua_chem said:
Are you using you pH solution or the one that came with the drop checker. Im skeptical of a diy setup making a drop checker green.

Sounds like textbook nitrogen deficiency, although phosphate can often present in a similar way.

I use the solution from drop checker. However i also confirm it by using pH and kH chart. The CO2 is around 25 ppm.

Even if I directly put the CO2 tube to the inline of my canistrr, I got lime green on drop checker.
 
Use your own pH solution. The stuff that comes with it is horrible. Also, do you have 4 dKH solution?
 
aqua_chem said:
Use your own pH solution. The stuff that comes with it is horrible. Also, do you have 4 dKH solution?

I dont have 4 dKH solution but I have pH solution (API low range pH test kit).

I use ISTA CO2 indicator I bought fom kensfish.com.

By the way, my DIY CO2 consist of 10 liters of yeast solution and producing about 3 bps at peak.
 
Well, that explains that. Most people don't assemble arrays of CO2. Kudos to you. You should definitely use the 4 dKH solution and API low pH solution though, as the stuff that comes with it never seems to work right.

What kind of light do you have on this thing?
 
aqua_chem said:
Well, that explains that. Most people don't assemble arrays of CO2. Kudos to you. You should definitely use the 4 dKH solution and API low pH solution though, as the stuff that comes with it never seems to work right.

What kind of light do you have on this thing?

special light for aquatic plants with apecific wave length for photosynthesis. its produced by NEC (Japan). 20 watts x 4.
 
Thanks for the replies so far.
So, back to my question, is it OK to overdose Flourish ? I am thinking to slowly increase the dose, say 20% everyweek, while watching if there any undesired effects to my tank.
 
aqua_chem said:
If he's in a high light + CO2 situation already, it's entirely possible that he's underdosing.

Very true, he should be able to find the happy median pretty easily, that algae will come quick once you start overdosing enough.
 
Update: increased the dose for about 20% since beginning of January. No more yellowing leaves and no sign of algae.
 
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