Will adding a liquid fertilizer help my planted 125l tropical aquarium?

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steele22

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Feb 26, 2015
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Have 4 amazon swords, a few grass patches and two of those plants on driftwood. New 8 week set up with root fertilizer balls in the substrate. A bit of black algae lately and small amounts of green floss algae on the glass and filter box that are fine i think. T5 lights on a 10hr timer and the 15 small fish doing fine. Should i start adding fluval excell as directed to spur plant growth, as they are starting to stagnate a bit. Dont want to get into carbon pumps, keeping it easyish maintenance.

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What size tank?
How many bulbs is your fixture?
Are the bulbs t5ho?

That information will help Us Out With Making A recommendation
 
A 125l long with 2 t5 bulbs. Rio juwell standard. Thanks.

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Your Tank

Have 4 amazon swords, a few grass patches and two of those plants on driftwood. New 8 week set up with root fertilizer balls in the substrate. A bit of black algae lately and small amounts of green floss algae on the glass and filter box that are fine i think. T5 lights on a 10hr timer and the 15 small fish doing fine. Should i start adding fluval excell as directed to spur plant growth, as they are starting to stagnate a bit. Dont want to get into carbon pumps, keeping it easyish maintenance.

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Hello steel...

You're fertilizing the plants that need to go into the substrate, so that leaves only the plants that need to live on top. The fish will take care of fertilizing those. Just feed the fish regularly and give them a variety of flakes, freeze dried and frozen. 15 fish will easily provide ferts for plants in a 30 gallon tank.

Make sure you keep the tank water clean. Regular, large water changes will replace minerals that are lost to the filtration process. The longer water stays in the tank the less it's able to sustain anything that lives in it, so it needs to be removed and replaced often.

Have fun!

B
 
A 125l long with 2 t5 bulbs. Rio juwell standard. Thanks.

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Those lights over that tank are too powerful to go without fertilizers like bbradbury suggested.

To keep the algae monster from gaining speed I would highly suggest that you get into either pps pro or estimative index (EI) fertilizer dosing. Both of them work great, but they work in different ways.

After that, I would start dosing Gluraraldehyde (excel) you can either dose the excel or save yourself a bit of money and buy metricide 14 day sterilizing solution. The metricide 14 is the same thing but twice as strong as the excel. Just throw out the activator bottle.

In either case I would dose at least 5ml of excel daily (2.5ml of metricide)

Lastly, I would suggest cutting down the photo period to about 6 hours daily.

What are the root fertilizer balls you used?
 
They are called duplarit k. Went and got some fluval excel today, but wont add it till I get a better knowledge on what is best. Thanks

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If you start dosing Excel as directed on the bottle, there's not much trouble that can come of it aside from melting certain species of plants, such as vallisneria species or some -wort species. People get into trouble when they start dosing higher levels. I think it will probably start to help out with your black algae problem as well.

I also agree that getting some sort of dosing strategy is a good idea. PPS/EI are probably overkill on a non-CO2 tank, but simplified versions will help.


Ditto the bit about root ferts.
 
Added 10 mls today of excel in a 10 l water change. Changed another 10l without it. Bit nervous about that much at once, but the fish didn't seem to mind. Going to dose every other day as directed. Anubus and sword tails should appreciate the extra care. All your help is great, so any ideas always welcome.

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Dosing now every other day, which is an option if guidelines are to be considered. Seems like some new growth is happening and algae no worse, but a bit better if anything. Fish better than ever too.

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New leaf shoots all over now and i hope its a good start. No quick wins in this hobby. That's why its so good. Maintain the basics and the rest is up to you.

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