# Seachem Weekly Dosing Chart



## natemcnutty (May 26, 2016)

Well, there are things on there that are unnecessary, and then there are things that are.

To your point, dosing everything all at once at water change time is not recommended. You usually want to dose macro ferts (NPK) at least 8 hours apart to avoid precipitation of minerals like iron. Additionally, some nutrients are only available in the water column for a day or two after dosing. This is why we dose micros every other day.

You should read up on EI or PPS based dosing charts and give one a try. You might like the results - only downside is doing 50% water changes each week.

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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

Uh oh, there is no way I am doing 50% water changes I do 20% monthly and run almost Walstad by keeping a balance between bio and plant load. 

I only dose Flourish, Iron, and Potassium, not sure what your take on those three are. I also dose Excel but I already know that only stays in the water column for a day. 

Looks like Flourish and Potassium are a twice weekly thing, and looks like Iron is an every day thing but they skip days based on what your putting in with the iron. Flourish already contains traces of Iron so do you think it is okay to dose Flourish and Iron together once a week? Appears that Excel can be dosed with anything, except they cut it on the 7th day and I am wondering if that is due to the Prime?

What is your take on dosing these products in a borderline Walstad tank? If they are being consumed should I worry about them building in the water? My guess is that the nutrients are contained in some sort of a carrier oil of some sort and even though the nutrients are consumed the carrier oils are left behind in the tank??


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## natemcnutty (May 26, 2016)

Teebo said:


> Uh oh, there is no way I am doing 50% water changes I do 20% monthly and run almost Walstad by keeping a balance between bio and plant load.
> 
> I only dose Flourish, Iron, and Potassium, not sure what your take on those three are. I also dose Excel but I already know that only stays in the water column for a day.
> 
> ...


Pertaining to EI and water changes, it's just a simpler way of maintaining the nutrient load in a tank without having to constantly test. You can dial it in over time, but I doubt to the point of only found 20% once a month. You may want to keep an eye on GH/KH and nitrates if only changing that little water.

The three ferts you dose do not interact with each other. The reason iron is not dosed on macro days is because it will cause the iron to precipitate.

Potassium can really be dosed whenever and won't hurt anything of you somewhat overdose. Excel does need to be dosed daily as it lasts 24 hours or so and only matters when light is on, and I'm not aware of anything it interacts with. They may have cut it in water change day because the directions are too dose more at water changes?

Flourish Comprehensive is a micro fertilizer which contains some iron. Both use ferrous gluconate which only lasts in the water column for about a day. Since you are not dosing full macros, I would do it like this (say first Sunday is water change day):


Sunday - Dose Potassium
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning - dose comprehensive
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning - dose iron




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## Triport (Sep 3, 2017)

I've pretty much been following it for now. I just printed up labels on each bottle with the day on it to make it easier. Working out pretty well so far.


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

I can ensure you that I am capable of dialing it in to 20% a month, I have done it before and it stayed that way until I broke the tank down. However it was never done with an Iwagumi which is a huge challenge, which is why I designed the system to grow Java moss and junk in the sump to balance the water column.

I go light on the Potassium because I thought it fed algae but now that I am looking over Seachems chart I think I should use Phosphorus which is what I may be thinking algae feeds off. 

Thank you very much for writing that up. 

I am at the point right now that I will no longer enjoy this hobby if I have to dose something every day, sometimes I do not even have time to feed my fish on a schedule. The "5G Tall" in my signature was dialed in to 20% monthly and I was dosing everything at the same time once a week or right after my monthly WC. Toward the end I had nothing but shrimp and snails, that was a very fun tank with extremely low maintenance. If I have to do daily dosing I would have to get a multi-dose machine and feed that into the Iwagumi sump. 

I am honestly thinking about dropping the entire Iwagumi project, going back to a super low maintenance nano tank and focusing my efforts on my reef....oh yeah got my toes wet and caught the fever!


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## natemcnutty (May 26, 2016)

You don't absolutely have to dose like that - it's just shown to be one of the most effective ways across all variables (different substrates, various water parameters, etc.)

My work tank still looks ok even though I never dose weekends and occasionally miss other days too. I think that once the plants are healthy, you can be a little more flexible, but maybe that's just me.

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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

Only way I will do any hobby? 
Look, learn, and adapt as needed!
Advise and recommended methods are often only written as if they fit all of us when it is certainly true that we are all different. So feel free to adapt as it works best for you. 
Along the way, I assume there will be errors but if I look close enough, I may learn some way to avoid the same mistake.


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

I look at house plants that grow in almost inert soil, we fertilize once and a while but not every time we water. In a smaller aspect I agree a healthy plant can easily go a few days or even weeks without ferts.


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## DigityDog70 (Jan 20, 2017)

This is a good post (OP). I often wondered if most people actually perform the 50% water change? I find myself doing a 30% about once a week and although my tanks are not perfect, this is possibly the reason. I mean the plants look pretty good in terms of color, but I am still wrestling with algae issues which I think are starting to looking more and more like "light" related issues more than anything, but that's a tangent. 

That said, those that are on this thread and anyone who reads this question, do you mind sharing whether or not you change your water 50% once a week (or 20%,30% etc.) assuming you're following a daily regimen such as this Seachem schedule or something similar, even if it is your own schedule? 

I still consider myself a beginner at this planted tank thing (although I don't consider it difficult, there's just so many aspects to learn). For instance, once I think I've got a process down, then there always seems to be something new to figure out. Must be my lack of experience.


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## clownplanted (Mar 3, 2017)

If you are doing low tech might I suggest just get thrive which is an all in one fert and dose once or twice a week based on need. Super easy and is what I use(ThriveS) with my planted shrimp tanks and it could not be easier. When I first started out with plants I too used seachem till it became such a pita I ditched that. Trust me look into thrive. 


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

How to do ferts is one that I find something that I like to adjust to each tank. That leads me to use dry ferts, not only as a far cheaper but a far more flexible method. One big difference and reason we only do ferts in the garden once but may need to do it several times a week is that we may/may not have fish involved. We can hit the garden with a big load all at once with no harm but we might not want that for fish. 
I tried liquid pre-mixed for a while but then found different tanks not needing any nitrate at all but no way to cut out dosing it in pre-mixed. 
So to keep my fish from living in way high nitrate in some tanks, I switched to dry and just mix it in my water as I need it. I keep a log book of things going on in each tank and as I see something to check, I test that item in that tank and adjust as needed. Some get N, some not, so to offset the loss of K when I drop dosing potassium nitrate, I dose potassium sulfate. 
But then, what works best for me is not always what works for you. As I set here waiting for other things to develope, I often set on the computer but spend a good amount of time looking at each particular plant in each tank. As a I look, I often see something that I want to watch. Maybe a leaf is curling and I want to watch it for a few days to see why. At times, that prompts me to bump one specific fert up an 1/8 teaspoon to see the result. 
I do my tanks kind of like driving. The signs may say it is safe at 85 but I often feel like 60 is better! If I see the nitrate is to high, I want to be able to back off but not totally stop.


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

PlantedRich said:


> Some get N, some not, so to offset the loss of K when I drop dosing potassium nitrate, I dose potassium sulfate.


Can you elaborate on this? I have a tank that I do not dose Seachem Nitrogen in anymore because it is not needed. Are you saying if the fish are providing enough nitrate and I stop dosing nitrogen I should supplement with my Seachem potassium?


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## DigityDog70 (Jan 20, 2017)

This seems like just as good of an opportunity as any to ask, "how are people testing their water parameters" for Macro and Micro nutrients? There are a few people on this thread that I know have some dialed in tanks and I certainly appreciate and value your feedback. 

Cheers, 
DD


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

Teebo said:


> Can you elaborate on this? I have a tank that I do not dose Seachem Nitrogen in anymore because it is not needed. Are you saying if the fish are providing enough nitrate and I stop dosing nitrogen I should supplement with my Seachem potassium?


 This is a place where it gets into some guessing at times. There are several places to find info on what a plant may look like when deficient on one nutrient or another. But it is like a lot of things and it isn't as clear as it seems. So I get down to a tank that has something not quite right with the plants and I start with the suggested and best guess on which is lacking or needing adjustment. 
My tanks tend to run high nitrate due to several things. One is too much food but another is using too many Osmocote pellets under the sub. O+ is a house plant fert that many use for their tanks but it blows my phosphate way high.
So I want to stop feeding the high nitrate and phosphate to get it down to reasonable. But if I totally stop adding KNO3 and K2PO4, I'm also not dosing potassium (K). So in checking it seems the answer is to sub in Potassium sulfate. In loose theory, dropping an 1/8 of one and adding an 1/8 of the other gets me close to the same amount of K as I have stopped. 
The idea being that I want to sort through the best choice of what's lacking but when adding that doesn't help, I want to go through adding or changing other nutrients. Doing it one at a time cuts the confusion as to which was needed when I see a good response.
I test nitrate and phosphate as being easy. K I do not but do try to be aware of it. I do not test micros as my water is terribly hard/alkaline and likely to have plenty of Ca. To assure that I do not have a MG shortage, I swap in Epsom salt as magnesium sulfate as it is cheap and easy.


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

See this is where some people draw the line, I am into the basic chemistry of plants but I never grasped the whole "this is linked to that" I just run with the minimal dash of everything. I test for nitrate, and every once and a while phosphate, I had been told there was no test for micros and macros when I first started using this forum. I guess in general the fastest consumed element is iron and they do make an iron test so if you test for iron and watch that drop you have an idea where everything else is at. 

I think the reason this was never a problem for me (look at my tanks) is because I do not use a substrate fertilizer, I only use water column dosing which has worked for me...it seems to make its way into the substrate. This may not work on larger scale aquariums but for me Seachem has generalized dosing directions for tanks that are what I consider middle of the road planted, once you have a heavily planted tank you need to up the recommended dosages. I only have a few small tanks so its not expensive, and the directions give me somewhere to start and combine with visual signs of deficiencies. I feel the water column only way of fertilizing also helps me get away with minimal Walstad style tanks where I do a water change once a month and it is usually not more than 30%

I am dabbling with saltwater coral reef tanks and I have to say the chemistry involved in high tech freshwater tanks is much more complicated, and has driven me back down to low maintenance and over to saltwater.


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

Certainly nothing wrong with the approach Teebo has going as it fits what he needs and that is what I feel is the primary thing to do at the time we feel right. 
I think when we start a project we would like to know what to do and we almost "demand " a simple set of rules to get there. Compare it to almost anything else and we see much the same.
Cooking, we want a recipe to follow and we want to do it exactly right until we figure out that we don't like it that way and want more of something. Adding, subtracting or changing ferts we use is just a different form of modding the recipe if it doesn't taste right. 
But before I change the recipe, I may need to wait a bit and see what it tastes like on the first go? 
So when starting my tanks, I try to follow some rules but I am more likely going to follow some and not others. I don't know which to call it, a steep learning curve or numerous failures! 
In actual fact, I doubt that I will ever get it exactly right and if I did it would be so boring I might quit!!


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## Teebo (Jul 15, 2015)

Great cooking analogy PalntedRich, this is exactly what needs to be done and for some people I would assume budget is a factor so they never even get a chance to try "all out" and then back down or tweak. I agree you do not want to achieve the exactly right end point, as an analogy for you when I was a kid building the linking-log houses and setting up the village to play was the fun part....once it was setup to play I lost interest haha. 

At this point in my life with free time, I found my sweet spot with tank complexity and enjoyment so I am going back. Everyone should keep an eye out for this build thread in the riparium section, it will be a pico 2 gallon or less.


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