Plant Ferts.

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

oscarbreeder

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Sep 2, 2003
Messages
4,075
Location
Palm Bay Fl
What kind of plant fertilizers do yall use?






I have been using Flora Pride for a while now and am not to impressed.
 
I don't know what it is you wouldn't be impressed with. In my experiences, fertilizer isn't enough; you need tons of light and co2 along with fertilizer to see beautiful plants.

Anyway, I use Kent's and I couldn't be happier. My plants look beautiful; sometimes I even sell the cuttings (if I don't have needy friends) to my lfs, and I've had basically every compliment you can get.

But fertilizer isn't the trick, co2 is :p.
 
As far as I'm concerned light and CO2 are macro nutrients. I use Seachem Flourish, Plantex CSM+boron, chelated iron, KNO3, KH2PO4, and K2SO4.
 
seachem flourish, seachem iron, and seachem excel (until i can get the hagen system to work). i also have jobes sticks under the substrate. I like seachem's stuff, esp. for iron. Pricey, I know, but a pretty good product. Jobes fertilizers are dirt cheap.
 
Fluorite red. Works like a charm along with my DIY CO2 and 18.000K bulb (wierd, I know). I did lose my water sprites, though... I think that might have been a temperature issue, more than anything else.

Just make sure to rinse it out REALLY well before use. It is a bit of a pain in the butt.
 
yeah, i think its pretty good. I guess it depends how into plants you are. If you've got a large tank thats heavily planted you'll need more than just Flourish. If you've got a small, with good light of course, its pretty good. like i said earlier, i like the flourish iron. i find my plants need a lot of iron. HTH.
 
I do have a pretty big tank(55gal) and I am just getting into live plants.
I have around 25-30 plants so far and plan on getting more.
I have a shop light I bought from wal-mart on the tank with two bulbs.
Both bulbs are only 40 watts(thats the biggest bulb I can find localy)
I know thats not enuff watts but will have to do for now till I can find bigger ones.
I have a co2 injector on order from my lfs.
Should be here by the 31st.
I am looking on line for bigger bulbs today.
WOW $$$$$$$.
Well hope I can get the plants to do well.
Thanks for all the tips.
 
You won't find higher wattage bulbs than 40 watts. Normal output florescent bulbs in the T12 size normally run 10 watts per foot. Next step up would be VHO bulbs which would put out 110 watts per bulbs. But you would need a VHO ballast to drive these bulbs.

Now a word about shop lights. They suck. Most shop lights and ALL the cheap ones under drive the bulb. So if you are lucky you might actually be getting 30-34 watts per bulb. Then there is the matter of the so called reflector. I call it a diffuser. A shop light is designed to light up a room or a shop. So the more you can scatter the light from the point source the better. For use over an aquarium you want the light to go down. Not out. A long time ago I had two shop lights over a 55 gallon tank. Should have been 160 watts. Well I put a 110 watt AH Supply kit in the canopy and it gave me more USABLE light in the tank. It's not how much light you have over the tank but how much you get INTO the tank.
 
shop ligths beat the ones that come with the tank and dont cost a weeks pay like the ones sold online.
My shop light isnt hanging above the tank it is sitting right down on it so the light has no where to go but down and I used the reflector out of the light that came with the tank light.
 
the shop light I am talking about is a two tube florescent light like you would hang in a work shop or a garage.
you know the white ones you can get at any hardware store or wal-mart.
 
Rex, going to disagree a bit.

Shoplights are fine for those on a budget, or who just want to get their green thumb wet.

On my 45 gallon tank I have one shop light. It even hangs over the edge 4 inches. I know I'm not getting that much light in there but I have Crypts, Vals, Sag, Hygro, and Java fern in there. Everything does great. OK, they hygro is kind of leggy, but thats it. The sag and vals nearly take over everything if I let them.

I have no plans to upgrade anything on this tank. Sometimes I like it better than my high tech tanks because I don't have to constantly trim stuff.

For people who don't have the cha-ching that some of us have, they do great. Like 20 bucks at the hardware store.

I started out this way, because the whole high-tech planted tank intimidated me badly.

I reccomend this to folks with a good amount of fish exp., but no/very little with plants.
 
But you know that your tank is a low light tank. People put two shop lights over a 55 and think they have a high light tank and they don't. Hygro won't be leggy if it gets 2 wpg. Less and it gets leggy.
 
I agree with corvuscorax.
If ya dont have alot to spend a shop light works wonders.
Thats part of DIY.
You can spend a life savings trying to keep up with the latest equipment.
I say if it works use it...lol.
 
I put rootabs under roots such as Seachem's Flourish Tabs. They last 5 months although they are expensive. I dose my tank with Seachem Iron every other day or 3x per week. Then I add Seachem Potassium and Seachem's Flourish (for trace minerals) once per week per the dosage recommended for all. I keep the CO2 around 15 to 20ppm.

Be careful to not overdose too. Good luck.
 
OUCH! Seachem Potassium? Well the recommended level for potassium in a planted tank is 10-20 ppm. I would rather spend my money on more plants and not Seachem's over priced and low powered potassium supplement. For a 26 gallon tank you would have to add 26 ml just to get it to 10 ppm and then dose every week for water changes and plant usage. I would rather use something like K2SO4 which is very inexpensive.
 
Back
Top Bottom