[WaterLife]

Very newbie question, but wanted to see if there is some general guide line/formula for dosing low tech tanks.

Can be any type of dosing regiment, just want healthy plants

So I have a 20 gallon tall
heavily planted (slow-fast growers)
medium lighting (30 PAR at sub, currently 8 hours, but can adjust)
No co2, No Excel (keeping it low tech)
Inert sub, have Osmocote+, but want to only add to heavy root feeders, not the whole tank
7.4 pH, 3 kH, 3 gH (tank and tap)
Can do water changes as the dosing plan requires

Dry Ferts I have currently: (can get more if necessary)
CSM+B
Potassium Nitrate - KNO3 - N
Mono Potassium Phosphate - KH2PO4 - P
Potassium Sulfate - K2SO4 - K
Osmocote+

I could experiment and just dose by any seen deficiencies, but just wanted to know if there is a general dosing guide for low tech.

So with the info given, is there a guide on how much/what I should be dosing?
(Just assume no fish food or fish bioload to keep things more simplistic, I will adjust dosing accordingly)



By the way are there any micro measuring spoons to use for dosing small amounts on small tanks? (found some long handle ones on ebay, but any local or with shorter handles?)
Just think it would be a bit easier dosing rather than make liquid solutions.

 

[klibs]

Just dose like 1/4 EI and you will be fine IMO

 

[Hoppy]

Just dose like 1/4 EI and you will be fine IMO

I agree, except that plants take up nutrients more easily/quickly if the concentration in the water is above some minimum value. (I'm pretty sure that is correct, but I may be wrong.) I am restarting my low light tank right now, so, based on that, I am going to dose weekly instead of dosing smaller doses more often. EI is based on dosing 3 times a week. I will be dosing once a week, but about the same dosage as is in the table, so that would be 1/3 of EI. By doing this I should be able to keep the minimum concentration in the water higher, without running into a too high concentration later. I will change 50% of the water every 2 weeks, instead of every week.

The whole subject of EI dosing just got a big debate on a couple of other threads here, which led me to this change.