Fertilizers, Substrate & Easylife Carbo

[merlinblack]

Hi folks

I'm looking to have really good plant growth in my tank to make it look good and to absorb nitrates produced by fish.

The water is really hard here and only vallis will grow in it so I bought an RO unit and am adding RO right to make soft water.

I've been experimenting with dry fertilizers - knowing that plants need Nitrogen Phosphorous & Potassium I though i should provide more P&K so that they can consume the N faster so I added some monopotassium phosphate and trace element mix that i got from aqua essentials but ended up with furry algae growing on the bogwood and the leaves and found out that high levels of P caused the furry algae and that phosphate should be kept quite low - Phosphate was 5ppm.

Ive since done a massive water change and got it down to 0.25pp phosphate and added 3g of potassium carbonate, 7g trace element mix and RO right to make soft water to my 400 litre tank. The pH was pH 5.8 before I added the trace element mix and K2C03, I've not checked it yet since adding them but doubt its changed a great deal. Since Ive been using RO water I have had a great deal more success with plants, I have floating plants and java fern growing really well (which wouldnt grow at all using my tap water).

What other fertiliser/additive should I add as well or instead of what I've been adding?
I dont want to go to the effort of gassing with C02 but have seen Easylife-Carbo advertised - does anyone know what this contains and whether it is any good? It obviously cant be CO2 and Im just consearned i could be adding something i dont want like sodium or something?

Also I threw away my gravel after the fish had a disease that wiped them out and becuase I want to use a substrate thats really going to be good for the plants but not extremely expensive as my tank is 5'x2'x2' amd also want it to tolerate fish digging in it from time to time.

 

[waterdrop]

I am not the expert advice you would want, just a humble beginner, but will humbly submit that the planted tank hobby is a big world and the pinned articles at the top of the "Plants and Planted Tanks" subforum here is a good starting place for learning. Aaron's back to basics article and many others up there are really excellent.

There is no end to what you can try and do with planted tanks, but there are also various "fault-lines" we often see to help describe the different paths people get off on in the forest. Amount of light is a driving force for much that happens and two major pathways are often described with respect to light: "high-tech" is a term describing tanks where the light level is high enough that demand for the carbon nutrient makes pressurized delivery of CO2 pretty much a must. "low-light" is a term for lighting levels and hours that keeps a planted tank below that higher tech level. Often "liquid carbon" (actually quite a complicated chemical but a well-accepted approach) like EasyCarbo or Seachem Excel is used to supplement carbon nutrition in low-light approach tanks.

Another fault-line lies between a small specialized fraction of the planted world called, among other things, "NPT" (for natural planted tank) or sometimes referred to as the Diana Walstad method, and the rest of the planted world, made up of the 2 major approaches previously mentioned called high-tech and low-light. "NPT" approaches are notable for involving potting soil substrates in a major way and for not using many other things that typical aquarists and planted tank enthusiasts take for granted. "NPT" and "high-tech" constrast with each other rather sharply but awareness and some knowledge of both is a good thing for a complete planted education I'd guess.

Going back to the low-light approach, which is where you sound to be so far, I believe that substrate is often regarded as a sort of back-up insurance, if you will, for the job that should be getting done by the careful dosing of ferts using a planned scheme. In your reading up above you will hopefully come across the term "estimative index" or EI for short. A "reduced EI" fert regime is sometimes used in conjunction with liquid carbon and low-light to come up with a successful slow-growth setup.

I hope that gives you some ideas for further exploration and that I've not insulted you if you already knew this info. Good luck with your planted planning!

~~waterdrop~~
edited: more detail about EI

 

[merlinblack]

I am not the expert advice you would want, just a humble beginner, but will humbly submit that the planted tank hobby is a big world and the pinned articles at the top of the "Plants and Planted Tanks" subforum here is a good starting place for learning. Aaron's back to basics article and many others up there are really excellent.

There is no end to what you can try and do with planted tanks, but there are also various "fault-lines" we often see to help describe the different paths people get off on in the forest. Amount of light is a driving force for much that happens and two major pathways are often described with respect to light: "high-tech" is a term describing tanks where the light level is high enough that demand for the carbon nutrient makes pressurized delivery of CO2 pretty much a must. "low-light" is a term for lighting levels and hours that keeps a planted tank below that higher tech level. Often "liquid carbon" (actually quite a complicated chemical but a well-accepted approach) like EasyCarbo or Seachem Excel is used to supplement carbon nutrition in low-light approach tanks.

Another fault-line lies between a small specialized fraction of the planted world called, among other things, "NPT" (for natural planted tank) or sometimes referred to as the Diana Walstad method, and the rest of the planted world, made up of the 2 major approaches previously mentioned called high-tech and low-light. "NPT" approaches are notable for involving potting soil substrates in a major way and for not using many other things that typical aquarists and planted tank enthusiasts take for granted. "NPT" and "high-tech" constrast with each other rather sharply but awareness and some knowledge of both is a good thing for a complete planted education I'd guess.

Going back to the low-light approach, which is where you sound to be so far, I believe that substrate is often regarded as a sort of back-up insurance, if you will, for the job that should be getting done by the careful dosing of ferts using a planned scheme. In your reading up above you will hopefully come across the term "estimative index" or EI for short. A "reduced EI" fert regime is sometimes used in conjunction with liquid carbon and low-light to come up with a successful slow-growth setup.

I hope that gives you some ideas for further exploration and that I've not insulted you if you already knew this info. Good luck with your planted planning!

Thanks for your reply, I'm new on here so haven't seen those articles but will have a good read. My tank has 2 x 54W T5 tubes so relatively low light. I've kept tropical fish for about 25 years and have had plants growing well upto 10 years ago when I moved to this area. I think they grew well more down to living in an area with good water, easy plants and luck than anything else. Since I moved to a hard water area and keeping fish that ate all the plants I gave up on it but after those fish died I got an RO unit and I'm now concentrating on having a well planted tank.

~~waterdrop~~
edited: more detail about EI

 

[RadaR]

The water is really hard here and only vallis will grow in it so I bought an RO unit and am adding RO right to make soft water.

It will be because of a different reason as to why you can only grow Valiis. It has nothing to do with the hardness of the water. The hard water wont have been killing off the plants. More likeyl nutrients and/or CO2. All the plants we can get accept a few like Tonia don't care about water hardness (GH) or even carbonate hardness (KH). Vallis does do well though in high KH areas because it can utilize the carbon from the carbonate.