Plant Fertilizers

[itafx]

I have a SW tank with seaweed and I want to fertilize the water column. I have flourish, but it says it's for FW. What does one use to fertilize a SW water column?

 

[MT79]

AFAIK nothing. High nutrient levels and excess "plant" growth is something that is looked on as a problem generally in SW tanks(especially reefs due in part to the high lighting conditions). People often grow macro algaes in order to reduce the levels of excess nutrients that accumulate in SW tanks such as PO4, NO3 to limit the growth of more problematic species of algae, etc. Fish feedings and fish waste along w/ the necessary amount of lighitng is plenty for the growth of seaweeds, macro-algaes, etc.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Ahh... I remember now. You're the person that got the seaweed and sand off the beach and established a saltwater tank with it, correct?

If you're talking about the same seaweed, I'm thinking no amount of "fertilization" is going to help you. The waters where you collected the stuff are far cooler than normal saltwater tanks.

The macro algaes MT79 are talking about are native to warmer tropic waters and flourish there with no additional additives.

 

[MT79]

You're the person that got the seaweed and sand off the beach

I was assuming it was a LR hitchhiker...If not then yeah, that's a whole other story.

 

[itafx]

Ahh... I remember now. You're the person that got the seaweed and sand off the beach and established a saltwater tank with it, correct?

If you're talking about the same seaweed, I'm thinking no amount of "fertilization" is going to help you. The waters where you collected the stuff are far cooler than normal saltwater tanks.

The macro algaes MT79 are talking about are native to warmer tropic waters and flourish there with no additional additives.

Yes. I'm the guy. I think you are right. The seaweed is mostly gone now. I pulled it out before it got too bad, but I left a little in because my sand crab likes eating it.

 

[melosu58]

Nitrates and excessive nitrients that are in the tank is all you need. Do not add that to your tank.

 

[itafx]

I've come a long way since then. Now I have a 46 gal and 29 gal SW tanks with some soft corals and a small bioload. I got a macroalgae (Caulerpa) like this http://images.google.com/imgres?img...v=/images?q=caulerpa&svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&sa=N at a LFS that seems pretty good, but I wish I had some more SW plants, even if they have to be macroalgae, to fill out the tank. Here's a quote I got from a website on Calerpa: "The Best?: Caulerpas. Ask about sports cars and you hear Porsche, oak-ey wines and it's got to be chardonnay; for saltwater plant material the winner by a tank-slide are the Green algae species in the genus Caulerpa..." I'm trying to keep my light level down to about 2 Watts per gallon so I know hard corals aren't feasible for me.

 

[melosu58]

Just be careful with calerpa as it will go what they call sexual and cause your water to get cloudy. I have grape calerpa in my fuge and I have to keep it pruned regularly and keep the lights on 24/7.

 

[itafx]

Thanks for the tip. Can you tell by looking at the plant that it went sexual, or is it only from seeing cloudy water?

 

[melosu58]

Usually your water is milky white. I`ve never seen it but have heard from others that is what happens. As I said regular pruning and lights on 24/7 keep it from happening.