Seachem Flourish or Tropica Plant Nutrition?

[Satsumas]

I am planning on dosing my tank with ferts and now that i have some time before i set it up i would like to prepare as much as i can in time for when my luminaire arrives.

Looking at certain reviews and comments on fertilizers... Tropica and Seachem's Flourish in particular seem to be amoung the favourites.
I have always liked Tropica's website on plants and i would often use it, so i would like to try out some of their products. Also i have read up on fertilizers and Seachem's Flourish seem's to provide some really good results. I was wandering if anyone has used both? or particularly reccomends one or any other fertilizers besides these two.

Tank Info:
20gal long
96Watt Ligting
CO2
Eco Complete

TIA

 

[JDogg]

seachem IMO

 

[Purrbox]

Generally Tropica is recommended for their trace mix. I don't believe that they have separate ferts for the Macros, so you would need to look elsewhere for those. Seachem has a good product line, but will become expensive over time especially in high light tanks and/or large tanks. You best bet would be to use dry ferts. These can be ordered through Greg Watson for one stop shopping at a very reasonable price, or tracked down locally.

If you haven't done much fertilizing in the past, dry ferts can be a bit intimidating. For some it's easier to start with Seachem and then shift over to dry ferts as they start running out of the Seachem ferts. This has the added benefit of providing you with bottles to mix up your solutions in.

 

[czcz]

I've not used Flourish but have used CSM+B and Tropica's Master Grow (the old branding for Plant Nutrtion), and am of the opinion your tank needs to be dialed in before differences in traces are important.

A notable difference is Plant Nutrition has lower %Fe than Flourish, but many find they can dose at very low ppm with Tropica products. Both companies tout their product's ability to keep Iron available. Many aquarists insist they find better results with Tropica in hard water. Gurus like Plantbrain report a noticeable "sheen" from Tropica, and still others find such subtle differences not worth Tropica's price tag compared to Flourish/CSM+B/etc. Seachem/Flourish is perhaps the market leader in aquarium ferts and many, many people with fantastic tanks are happy with their products.

In other words, I don't think you should worry about this until you're past algae, growing pains, and so on. Both trace mixes are well regarded.

Topica has Plant Nutrition+ and root tabs now that have macros. I think it's silly to buy expensive liquid macros instead of ordering from Greg and using some free calc to mix your own, fwiw.

HTH

 

[Zezmo]

Both formulas work well. You should really make a choice based on cost and availability. As Cz mentions, the differences if there are any in performance are not going to be noticable.

EDIT:
My EI calculator details both of those prducts, you can compare actual nutrients for yourself.

http://webpages.charter.net/zezmo/EI-DoseRoutine_v4_public.xls

I have not included CSM+B yet, I do not use it so have not bothered to figure it out.