Fert Confusion

[paulc]

Hi,

Whilst I have been keeping tropical fish successfully for a number of years I really haven't paid a lot of attention to plants. Sure I have always had live plants but when they looked a mess I simply replaced them.

A while back I decided I wanted to aqua scape my tank so started looking into it. I have a reasonably well stocked (fish wise) 155Ltr tank so I don't want wall to wall plants. So I have been reading up on this and have decided to go for a simple pressurised CO2 system (D-D) for now. This is on order and I have a Drop Checker in place which currently very blue due to lack of CO2.

Once my CO2 levels are good I wanted to buy a good set of plants which then led me on to reading about giving plants the nutrients that they need - this has confused the heck out of me. To make it worse it appears that if I get this wrong I will probably suffer a Algae outbreak - Ahhhhhhh!

I am reading that there are liquid ferts that are for people that don't use CO2 and different ferts for people that do. Also if you have fish this is a whole different ball game as they produce waste which the plants use.

So really Im after some advice. I would prefer to dose weekly if possible and my aquarium is reasonably well stocked with fish, it will have CO2 and it will be reasonably well planted. Could someone please help me out with the plant nutrient side of things?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Ps3Steveo]

With adding CO2 you need really to be dosing ferts and some containing N&P too, I'd go with aqua essentials range of ferts, they're cheaper than the all in ones and you get more for your money too, with the CO2 you'd really wanna dose daily, aqua nourish used with aqua nourish+ would be a good idea, the nourish+ has the N&P needed and the nourish contains all the trace elements you need. Get some of those and dose daily 10ml nourish and 20ml nourish+ with the CO2 and you'll have healthy plants if your flow is good. Also you wanna up the CO2 to get that drop checker green, move it around your tank too to check if its getting concentrated in certain areas.

 

[paulc]

With adding CO2 you need really to be dosing ferts and some containing N&P too, I'd go with aqua essentials range of ferts, they're cheaper than the all in ones and you get more for your money too, with the CO2 you'd really wanna dose daily, aqua nourish used with aqua nourish+ would be a good idea, the nourish+ has the N&P needed and the nourish contains all the trace elements you need. Get some of those and dose daily 10ml nourish and 20ml nourish+ with the CO2 and you'll have healthy plants if your flow is good. Also you wanna up the CO2 to get that drop checker green, move it around your tank too to check if its getting concentrated in certain areas.

Thanks ps3stevo,

I have installed the CO2 at 1bps to see how that goes and have ordered some AE Nourish and Nourish plus. Hopefully that drop checker will start showing signs of going green now

Regarding flow, my tank has and external filter that runs along the back of the hood. Water is fed back in via a plastic tube. This does cause water movement so I'm hoping it will be enough. If however its not, what would be the best (cheapest) solution. Would this involve changing my filter?

 

[Ps3Steveo]

You could buy a faster filter, that would look better than buying a koralia but koralias move water well.