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Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)

Hi,

John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.

I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.

With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.

I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.

If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.

I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.

I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.

Thank you
Darragh Sherwin

anyone use E.I ferts

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14 Nov 2011 19:30 #1 by BlueRam (Sean Crowe)
does anyone use E.I ferts?

1, where to order them

2, how do u go about mixin

3, around wat price dose it come in at to be fully ordered and mixed?

have looked up a good bit about them like how much to mix and other things like that and how much to dose and when but havent seen anywhere to order them

they only thing i have seen about price is that it is much better value as to shop bought ferts

any bad reviews about E.I

also wat about "poor mans dupla drops" (PMDD)

i know E.I DOES require some experience but sure the only way to learn is to try?

sean

Sean Crowe

ITFS Member

Location: Navan

Always Remember Surviving Is Not Thriving

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14 Nov 2011 21:31 #2 by Katherine (Katarzyna Glebocka)
I use salts that are part of estimative index (EI). I use:
KNO3
KH2PO4
K2SO4
MgSO4*7H2O

There are also iron chelates that I don't use at the moment because I still have EasyLife Ferrum.

It is good to have a juvelery scale (up to 10 euros on e-bay) for proper measurements.

What else is needed:
- empty containers (bottles or jugs) to store ready solutions
- syringe to make proper doses (I use 10 ml one)
- deionized/destilied water to make solutions (1.70 per liter at petrol station, or 2.50 euro for 2/3 liters in Tesco)

The difference in cost was 60/70% when we counted it last time...

Where to buy: pm me if you wish :)

How to prepare solution:
Here are proportions that should be taken considering everything is done in 'room temperature':

KNO3: 30 gramms in 160 ml of deionized water
KH2PO4: 5 gramms in 75 ml
K2SO4: 30 gramms in 330 ml
MgSO4*7H20: 100 gramms in 110 ml

How to dose it? You can brows for Chack's Planted Aquarium Calculator (in archives) or give me your e-mail address and I will send you spreedsheet in Excel when I translate headlines.

I do not mix chemical regents, I keep them in separate containers and after weekly water test I calculate proper dosages of each of them.

There are also people who do not make solutions but I am affraid of it. It is easy to overdose.
Weekly water changes of 30 - 50 % are required.

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14 Nov 2011 21:53 #3 by manius112 (Mariusz Kaminski)
Just wonder someone said to me Ammonium Nitrate is illegal on Ireland and Germany?? Is that true??
Is there any exception from this or small amount you can have for EI method??
Its only my curiosity:-)
Coz EI is brilliant for planted tanks.
Can anyone tell me more about??
Thanks

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14 Nov 2011 22:06 #4 by Katherine (Katarzyna Glebocka)
It is subject to certain restrictions as it can be used as explosive material.

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17 Nov 2011 12:00 #5 by NosIreland (Andrius Kozeniauskas)

Just wonder someone said to me Ammonium Nitrate is illegal on Ireland and Germany?? Is that true??
Is there any exception from this or small amount you can have for EI method??
Its only my curiosity:-)
Coz EI is brilliant for planted tanks.
Can anyone tell me more about??
Thanks

Do not use Ammonium Nitrate(NH4NO3) for planted tanks as this will add ammonia in the tank and as we all know this is not good for fish. You should use Potassium Nitrate(KNO3) aka as Nitrate of potash, aka saltpetre.
Both NH4NO3 and KNO3 are hard to obtain in Ireland unless you are a farmer, but then I think the smallest quantity is 25kg bag.
You can get it on ebay or online stores in UK.

E.I. is good method for plants but I think it works best upto certain size. For big tanks I think it's not practical as the doses become big and also changing 50% of water in big tank(400L) will take some time. The other thing is that during water change you have to reset the water parameters which means that the tap water that you'll be putting in the tank must be clean. I don't know how many people have good water coming out of the tap but I don't so I have to use RO and it would take a while to filter 200L.
So I adjusted EI to much lower doses and instead putting huge amounts I only doses as much as my plants need. I still do WC but at much lower scale.

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03 Feb 2012 00:23 #6 by BlueRam (Sean Crowe)
just lookin back at this and seen that u are from navan NosIreland

where are u based u seem to know about EI and as i am only startin could really do with a chat face to face off someone who knows anyway u could meet up ?

sean

Sean Crowe

ITFS Member

Location: Navan

Always Remember Surviving Is Not Thriving

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