Slow down hondour thats a lot of questions
Yes you are beginning to get it, told you it was easy.
I havent double checked your calculations ill do that later, but you seem to have it correct.
In the beginning, the first couple of weeks you will slowly build your nitrate and phosphate levels up within the parameters.
I would aim to get your Nitrate levels up 10ppm and to keep them there for a while, now you have to do this slowly in the beginning, i wouldnt add an extra 5ppm immeaditaly, i would add 1ppm each day for about a week, and after about 4-5 days i would test the nitrate to see where you are, because dont forget each day the plants will be consuming the nitrate so the level will drop down again, at the end of the first week you will do your water change and add new water, so in effect you have lost half the nitrates and now you need to build them back up again, on the second week i would probably start adding 2ppm for a few days only and then test the level again with your nitrate kit, again your plants will be consumeing the nitrate, at what rate they are consuming the nitrate you wont know until you test, each tank or setup will be different, my uptake seems to be quite slow, yours may be a lot quicker, this is why you test in the beginning to make sure the nitrate does not run out.
Again i would do the same thing with the phosphate, build it up slowly, initially you want to reach a level of about 0.50-1 ppm of phosphate, the idea is that you should have a ratio of 10-1 between the nitrate and the phosphate, so 10ppm nitrate 1ppm phosphate, and these are the levels you should try and keep on an ongoing basis initially for the first 3-4 weeks.
Initially i would add 0.1ppm phosphate and only add this amount again after 2 days, bring the levels up slowly testing as you go to not over do it, you will find the more potassium you add the more the nitrates will be used up by the plants.
The idea of the method is that you will be able to notice defficiencys in your plants if they are lacking in any of the main constituant fertilisers, you dont need to test for potassium this will show up quite quickly if it is defficient.
A potassium defficiency would look like........pinholes would appear on the older leaves and after a while will get bigger, you would get yellow areas on the leaves and the tips and edges of some leaves might look withered.
But this will show up quite quickly, but it shouldnt be a problem because you are getting K from the pottassium nitrate and the potassium phosphate anyway so you should not see any deficiencys.
Edit: but yes hondour you can add the potassiun sulphate to the required level, but you will probably find you dont really need anymore, whats allready supplied should be sufficient, but wait and see if you see any defficiency and then i would add some K2SO4.
Just another thing i think we should start useing the chemical terms in the thread, its sort of standard practice if you use the EI method and are talking to other users, and it makes it easier for typing.
/www.thameswateruk.co.uk/en_gb/Downl...L_AND_COVER.pdf
) test kit. Phosphates used to be ok, but now they are barely detectable.
