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Originally Posted by Scolley
I'm sorry Wasserpest, I should have been more clear... I meant a "manual" gap dose. I've have great success with autodosing in the past, (my current 75g stabilizing problems not withstanding ), and one of the things I've vacillated back and forth on is the protocol...
1) Dose a level amount daily, and never any additional manual doses. Such as an extra manual dose to close the gap of what was lost after a water change. This implies that you auto doses is all you need, but you do that with the understanding that your ferts will be lowest right after a water change, and highest just before.
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2) Dose a level amount daily, with the aim of holding the tank on a given ppm target for each fert. This means that after a water change you must do a manual dose to replace what was lost. In fact, if your daily dose can hold your ppm steady, that means that you can use your manual gap dose to raise or lower your ppm's because your autodose is set almost perfectly to your up take rates. Unless you remove water from the tank (like a water change), where ever you put it, it stays.
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"Manual gap dose"... you can do it. Like I said, it would be extremely easy to program the timer to do this for you as well (with the kind of timers I am using). Say you add 1/4 tsp of something every day, which keeps your levels stable. Now you change 50% of the water, and figure you need 1/2 tsp to get to the previous levels. Just set the timer to dose an additional time after the water change, and now it's all automatic
I think when you go from dosing once a week or twice to daily dosing, you will notice that you need to increase the dosis a little bit, more than what you calculate... Example, if you dosed 1 tsp once a week, and now dose daily, you will probably want to use slightly more than one tsp in the solution (or more than 2 tsp if the solution lasts two weeks, etc). This goes along the lines what Marcel said, plants seem to be able to store nutrients for a while. The weekly or biweekly dosings provide them with a temporarily higher concentration, while with daily dosing you don't reach these levels.
Not sure though...
The question is, how exact do we need to keep the levels? EI is based on overdosing, while when you autodose, you can get the levels pretty close to what you and your plants want/need. I like lower levels, for reduced biomass production
