[plantbrain]

Originally Posted by ColeMan

1)The initial NH4 spike in any new tank has potentially very positive benefits for plants, as another NH4 spike this intense will, hopefully, never again occur in an established tank. Granted this isn't really new information (we all know plants use NH4) but it does suggest that using things like zeolite in your canister during cycling, though not necessarily detrimental, is at the very least unnecessary.

Let me pick this apart for you so you do not run away with the wrong conclusions.

Why might the tank do better faster with an established filter?
NH4=> NO3

Nitrogen is nitrogen.
Do not kid yourself with about it being "preferred" and that's why you see initial growth. As long as you have N, you are fine, the plants will make do with what they have and NH4 at high levels will burn and inhibit plants, some are more sensitive than pothers as well, some prefer NO3, some NH4, but all prefer a balance of both. It's not an either or, black and white thing, never was, but some reason, many seem to get caught in that trap.

Nitrogen is pretty much nitrogen, as long as there's enough available, the plants will grow. If you do not add any N to a plain silica sand sediment, and you have a sediment that has N, obviously you will have more growth.

Many folks do not add any ferts with plain sand or with ADA AS the first few weeks. So obviously the tank with more total nutrients, regardless of the transition state/form, will have more growth vs a limited situation with no source of N.

I've added NO3 and then added only NH4(flourite sediment, no source of N).
I saw better results with NO3 personally with 20 species of plants, Erios Tonia, hairgrass etc..... I added .5 ppm NH4 as NH4Cl vs 3ppm of NO3 as KNO3. K+ was about 20-30ppm, so was independent. Cl- at such small levels is assume to have no effect. I could not really see any differences, but there was less algae with the NO3. Others have tried this in the past, no effect they could see of show either.

2)When using an established filter, growth seems to level off much quicker; there's no explosive initial growth like what is often experienced with amazonia with an immature filter.

I've seen the opposite.
And with good reason, at 6 ppm of NH4, the ADA AS burns some plants(some responded very well however, Stargrass for example). So unless you do more frequent massive water changes, they will suffer. It's only since the leaching has stopped, I've seen growth return to normal. Some batches are okay, but some have really been poor with respect to initial growth. This tank had a packed filter with Zeolite, Purigen, Carbon, mulm, huge filter relative to tank size etc , and the tank was pre soaked 2 weeks prior to established some foreground plant roots, virtually none of them had growth and most had some melt back. 2x a week 70% water changes.
5 weeks later, the tank leveled out.

I could have resolved things by doing daily or 3-4x a week 70-90% water changes. But I wondered if 2x a week at this rate would take care of things.
It did not.

3)It's okay to dose potassium from the onset, but perhaps around the 2 week mark one can start lightly dosing other water column ferts; some plants may get deficient, but better than encouraging an algae bloom (i know this is debatable, but...)

This algae business is entirely rubbish. K+, Ca, Mg etc is fine. Few seem to point finger there. I've set up several tanks where I added full EI from day one and had little issue, others, I did nothing but water changes: algae, green water, poor plant growth.

So based on that, it would seem if you followed your logic that opposite is true.

However it's not this simple thing, we all have assumed ADA AS is consistent and stable and has no variation batch to batch.

Well it does.

Why would adding ferts(KNO3, KH2PO4, Fe/traces) etc from day one if you add a mature filter not cause algae but adding a non mature filter would using ADA AS?

Is it that the excess ferts led to the algae of rather, the NH4 from the ADA AS?

Try inducing algae with NO3 sometime, see if you can do it.
Then repeat with NH4.

New tanks also often have CO2 related issues, so such factors must be controlled for and be independent, otherwise you cannot conclude a thing from the results.

At two weeks in, I had all sorts of issues, it would not had matter then or at the start when they where added.

I really appreciate Jeff taking the time to talk with me, and so I figured I'd pass along the information (regardless of how well-known it may be). And, for what it's worth, although Jeff did endorse the amazonia over the II, he didn't say that there was anything inherently wrong with the new line; it was, he explained, created to combat some of the problems people were having with the original amazonia (eg. cloudiness), though its efficacy at doing such is questionable.

Hope this information is useful to someone...

I like and recommend ADA AS, however, it does require a lot of work in some cases. Very large frequent water changes in general are required to start the tank.

Some might be luckier there than other folks.
New tanks often get algae and have issues until the plants establish.
Water column ferts such as NO3, PO4, Traces, K/Ca/Mg etc do not induce algae. Adding NH4 + high light + CO2 to a new tank will induce algae, ask any of the folks that get GW due to fishless cycling. You can measure the rate of NH4 leaching in the water column in a new tank due to no bacterial colonization with ADA AS.

So if you remove the NH4 part(or have a bacterial colony able to convert it to NO3 rapidly as well as having leaching rates decline over time), then there's no algae if you dose right away, which large frequent water changes remove(same reason why breeders do large WC's). Even the zeolite I packed in there could not put a dent in the NH4 nor the mulm. Other tanks this worked fine.

Much like the (past)assumption that all cheapo test kits are accurate, after running a few reps, suddenly it's pretty obvious there's a lot of variation.

You might not need to do 3-4 x a week large water changes in some cases. Knowing precisely how much WC's to do to keep the NH4 from getting too high and causing algae/melting plants etc, vs running too low and not having enough nutrients for faster plant growth is tough call, but you can measure the ranges with precise NH4 test methods.

So you will see poor growth in some cases, algae and poor growth in others, and then good growth with in between ranges. Unless you test and monitor NH4, you are not going to know.
Adding multiple variables like NO3/PO4, poor plant health/nutrient status for the new plants you are adding and not considering the effects of NH4/high light etc, it going to lead to errors. I do think there is some interaction once algae starts/is induced with PO4/NO3 at high levels and if the plants are not properly cared for/growing well. But these do not induce algae to begin with, so if you address that, then adding them should not be an issue.


Regards,
Tom Barr