richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (01/17/90)
Upon John Bridge's behest, I spoke today to the Coralife people about
their plant fertilizers.
These are my notes:
I spoke to Dr. Tooley. He had a slight accent, so it could have been
Dr. Tu Lee for all I know. Nice man. He can be reached at (213) 320-9872
Q: What are the proportions of Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P) and Potassium (K)
in the aquarit plant food ?
A: Basically it's 2-1-2.
Q: Hmm. Planttabs are 10-15-10. Why the difference ?
A: They are measuring theirs by weight. Ours is by volume; it's in
solution.
(I didn'nt understand what he was talking about, but didn't want to press it)
Q: What are the sources for these ?
A: Calcium Nitrate, Potassium Phosphate and Potassium Nitrate.
Q: Is there anything else in there ?
A: Yes. Plants need a balance of 13 essential minerals. A deficiancy
in any one of them will result in poor plant growth. Note that
different plants have different requirements as to the percentages
of these nutrients.
Q: And what is the source of these minerals ? Standard Hoaglands solution ?
A: No. Hoaglands is outdated. It's a formula developed by Dr. Muraschu (SP?)
and his Prof. Dr. Skoog (SP?) at the university of Irvine. It contains
more elements than Hoaglands.
(Can anybody fins any reference to work by these guys so we can find out
exacly what is in this stuff ?)
Q: Let me get back to the N-K-P for a moment. Plantabs are 10-15-10
yet Tetra fertilizers are 1.5-0-10, ie. just Potassium. Any idea
why this is ? Is the idea here that the fish supply nitrates and
there will (for whatever reason) be enough phosphates and that all
plants need is to get additional potassium to utilize existing
nitrates and phospates.
A: Yes I think thats the idea, but I peronally don't think this
is very well thouh out. You can't really do that, it's like
eating things from the four food groups but eating them
on different days. Besides, plants don't use ammonia which
is what fish excrete, they use nitrates.
(Doesn't this contradict what I just read here someplace ?)
Q: What can you say about algae ? I used to have blue-green
bit now that I'm using RO water I get hair algae.
A: Yes, blue green is the most pernicious, but requires some
minerals to grow. RO water does not contain many of these
minerals so it will not dominate. Thread algae, however
trives on silicates which are ot removed by the RO filter.link@soup.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link) (01/17/90)
In article <24849@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >I used to have blue-green bit now that I'm using RO water I get hair algae. OK. I give up. What's RO water? Richard Link Space Sciences Laboratory
richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (01/18/90)
In article <1990Jan17.054121.27143@agate.berkeley.edu> link@soup.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link) writes: >In article <24849@gryphon.COM> richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >>I used to have blue-green bit now that I'm using RO water I get hair algae. > >OK. I give up. What's RO water? Reverse osmosis. It's a highly selective filter that pretty much de-ionizes water. Looking at my notes, which I can barely read there are two points I forgot to make: 1) When I asked why they don't just make 1 chemical that you can add rather than having a fertilizer and an iron supliment and a trace element solution. The answer is that, the chemicals, when mixed, react and precipitate out. Also, the two Dr's that discovered the new trace element solution (modified fro Hoagland) are at University of Irvine and University of Wisconsin, in case anybody tries to track them down (and I hope somebody does)