macros and micros

[babydragons]

Not sure if I searched thoroughly enough but I'm curious. Why can't you dose macros and micros together? Is it because they will interact or because the plants won't be able to use everything or something else entirely?

[scapegoat]

I'm fairly certain that there is am adverse chemical reaction

[nilocg]

Phospate and iron will form a precipitate which makes them unavailable(for the most part at least) to your plants.

[Robert H]

There is always both present in the water and the substrate. If you follow any sort of fertilizer regime such as "Estimated Index", you are adding both at the same time. The questions is HOW MUCH. You use separate nutrients so you can measure how much of each you are adding. You want to maintain a certain nitrate level based on how quickly your plants use nitrogen. Same thing for phosphate, potassium and so forth. Minerals are usually lumped together because there is no way to test for each of them separately, and plants use minerals in much smaller amount than they do Macros. Mixing them does not matter, it is having too much of one and not enough of something else.

[BBradbury]

Originally Posted by babydragons

Not sure if I searched thoroughly enough but I'm curious. Why can't you dose macros and micros together? Is it because they will interact or because the plants won't be able to use everything or something else entirely?

Hello baby...

I dose my planted tanks with both macro and micro nutrients. Your plants need both. The plants need higher doses of macro nutrients, hense the name macro, meaning large. Micro nutrients are dosed in smaller amounts. Micro means small.

I use liquids, because they're easy and inexpensive. API has good liquid and so does Tetra. I also dose an Earth Juice product called "Microblast". I dose a couple of times a week when I top off my tanks. My plants seem to like them.

Long term though, nothing is better than the ferts the fish produce. If you have a heavy fish load, then you shouldn't need to dose much in the way of commercial ferts. Just feed your fish a balanced diet and meet the lighting needs of the plants.

Just one reporter's opinion.

B

[Bluek24a4]

Originally Posted by nilocg

Phospate and iron will form a precipitate which makes them unavailable(for the most part at least) to your plants.

^This. That's why you dose them on alternating days to give the plants a chance to get at them before phosphate and iron get at each other.

[jhays79]

So should you not dose a product like Seachem Iron, and Seachem Phosphorus on the same day?

[Jeff5614]

I add macros and micros on the same day. As far as I can tell the plants are fine. It's not as though you're mixing two concentrated solutions together. They're so dilute in the aquarium that adding them on the same day is not an issue. If it were, you'd never be able to keep any in the water column, as you do with EI, since they would always precipitate out.

[mjhanna21]

I have been dosing them together for the last two years and my plants are doing great.

[babydragons]

Wow so there seems to be those who are against dosing them together and those who dose them together regularly. Makes you wonder who's right.

[Silmarwen]

There are a hundred different topics upon which people differ in process--what works for some people, plants, and tanks, might not work for others, based on a hundred thousand different conditions in each individual situation.

The best you can do is take everything that has been said, see what applies to your situation, try it out, and take careful notes about how well it works. Then, you can return your experiential knowledge to the greater whole and the process begins again

[mistergreen]

Originally Posted by babydragons

Wow so there seems to be those who are against dosing them together and those who dose them together regularly. Makes you wonder who's right.

I probably doesn't matter too much when adding the ferts into an aquarium but you can see the chemical reaction pretty well in a small container.

[babydragons]

Originally Posted by mistergreen

I probably doesn't matter too much when adding the ferts into an aquarium but you can see the chemical reaction pretty well in a small container.

I'm going to try this when I get home. I would really love to see this now

[norbot]

So does the iron NOT interact with phosphates in the tank from fish food/waste?

I assume it does not or else one could never effectively dose iron with fish in their tank.

Seems a little weird, if you dose iron and phosphates they interact and become useless, but if you dose iron into a fish phosphate laden tank, there's no interaction?