Lamotte and EI saved my macrandra.

[sherry]

I have been fighting stunting rotalla macrandra for months. It used to just dissolve, but this last time, it merely stunted, tiny leaves that quickly lose their color after being born a gorgeous red.

well, Travis kept bugging me to test nitrates with lamotte (nitrates were always 20 on my ap kit)

I resisted the $50. meanwhile because I had read that high nitrates stunt macrandra, I kept trying to lower nitrates, feeding the fish less and less often. still they were 20 and I was beginning to contemplate TWICE weekly water changes, since clearly my once a week 50 percent change wasn't cutting it.

finally i gave in and got the lamotte kit. (i wanted to try co2 mist with sweetwater stones and was ordering from a lamotte site anyway and paying shipping anyway.. so I went for it. )

My nitrates were a little over 6 (AFTER multiplying!!!!). my ap test still showed 20.

I dosed 1/4 teaspoon of nitrates and oh my god, the macrandra grew big lush leaves within 2 days!!!!!

the entire plant is now growing faster and nicer and it keeps getting richer daily. I also began to lightly dose phosphates.

until now it was potassium and micros in my tank only.

Lamotte is worth the money unless you look at it this way. If I had just blindly followed tom barr's estimative index, I woudl have been dosing this way all along. but I kept thinking I had too many fish and his EI needed to be adjusted for that.

so for those of you who are able to blindly follow good advice, I say save teh lamotte bucks adn just do a real EI.

for those of you like me, who are skeptical, pay for lamotte and then do EI

 

[Plantbrain]

"Blindly follow" haha

You learned those AP test kits, for all the folks raving about them, are not that good if you ask me.

Some test kit batches might be, but each kit needs calibrated, do not assume that ALL the AP are as good as someone's comment here or another forum might suggest.

Make sure to measure yours...........

EI is fairly strraight forward, provides enough nutrients for any tank.
From there if you prefer less for some reason(we know it's not for algae prevention), you can slowly reduce the nutrient you want to reduce down and keep a close eye on the plant's health, once the plants cry uncle, then bump the dosing back up to the next highest level.

It's very important to do this slowly and conservatively.Changes should be given 1-2 weeks for most macros and at least 3 weeks for traces.

The closer you get to the edge, the more potential for issues you might have.

Large fish loads are not an issue unless you do few water changes, with 50% or more weekly? Not much issue.

But you can reduce the dosing down without a test kit by simply adding say 1/2 teaspoon for 2 weeks of KNO3, then say 3/8ths for 2 weeks and then 1/4 for 2 weeks etc and see how the plants respond.

This is very easy and requires no test kit

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Glenc]

Congratulations!! I am very happy to hear that your Mac is growing well, I know you have been trying to get it going for a long time. AP kits must vary in acuracy, as I to got the LaMotte N03 kit as well. AP N03 kit readings in my tank were at 5 to 7 ppm N03. LaMotte read 17.6 ppm, opposite to your readings. According to LaMotte my N03 was higher than I wanted, I'm shooting for 10 ppm N03. Just goes to show how frustrating and damaging getting false readings can be.

 

[sherry]

actually Glenc my Macrandra stunted at those levels.

btw.. still not getting a bright red color... Tom, any chance I need MORE than EI's levels of TMG?

The leaves are now big and soft, but somewhere between light orange and reddish.

 

[Plantbrain]

Need or want?
Those two are different.
If the water is slightly harder, then perhaps..........but R mac does not like the harder KH levels.

You can try adding more and see if you notice any real differences, chances are, it'll be things from CO2, pruning etc rather than you only changing the TMG dosing routine......

So you need to be pretty sure what you see is from the added TMG dosing. This takes time and experience. The plants often do not grow faster, they have difference appearances nmamely and then alter, better overall growth and good appearances.

Takes no less than 3 weeks to fully gauge a trace dosing routine.
Even then...............

Good job on realizing the difference in the 5-10$ test kits and a 50$ one.
I still suggest folks calibrate any test kit they want to use, do not rest onm the laurals of others' and base everything on that assumption.

You are guessing then........... which sort of defeats the purpose of testing .........

While I suggest calibrating the Lamotte as well, I've seldom, actually never found much differences between their measurements and the real values.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[sherry]

water pillow soft.. 1.5 kh since I stopped even adding 1 degree worth of buffer (as per your advice) and 3-4 gh with addition of greg's gh booster.

I will let a few weeks go now that I've begun adding the no3, since the mac is responding so well, to see if the color comes too, leaving tmg dosing at 7ml every other day.