Most Vital Nutrients

[Super Dude]

what are some of the most important components of ferts? i wanna know if mine is decent.

 

[Truck]

nitrogen (N) phosphorous (P) potassium (K)

 

[Nick16]

yeah NPK all the way. carbon is pretty important.

 

[Super Dude]

uh oh. mine only says potassium and iron. how long will natural N & P reserves last before needing replenishment?

would N do the same thing as oxygen does by dizzolving in the water through surface agitation?

 

[three-fingers]

uh oh. mine only says potassium and iron. how long will natural N & P reserves last before needing replenishment?

Depends, all tanks are different. Unfortunately, nobody can give you an accurate answer to that question, only very rough guesstimates if you were to give pretty much all the details about the tank. That means NO3 levels, how many fish in the tank, lighting wattage and type, size if tank, species of plants, water change schedule, how much and what you feed the fish, filtration, what you feed the plants, substrate, how old the tank is, water stats...and more. Pictures help too, as well as descriptions of plant deficiencies.

At the end of the day, if your plants are fine, don't worry.

If they aren't fine it can sometimes be fixed with the simple addition of one thing to the tank (a nutrient, or piece of equipment), but the best thing to do would be to start dosing EI, or a decent fertiliser that supplies everything like Tropica Plant Nutrition + (this is a more expensive option).

You could also look into Walstad style tanks, the best way to do this is to buy/borrow and read her book.

Most of the time IME people don't have success with plants purely because they don'y choose the right species - there are many that require essentially no special attention.

would N do the same thing as oxygen does by dizzolving in the water through surface agitation?

Nitrogen gas would, whoever plants tend to use nitrogen in the form of ammonium and nitrate, so no, don't worry about that specifically.

It is important to note that CO2 does though, and this is just, if not more important as nitrogen.

 

[Super Dude]

so basically nitrate is the same as nitrogen in a fert to a plant?

ps-i got a small limnophila sessiflora and some java moss. not exactly "planted", but a start. lol.

 

[three-fingers]

Basically, as far as NPK fertilisation is concerned anyway .

Nitrate is one part nitrogen and three parts oxygen (NO3).

Java moss makes basically no demands, Limnophila sessiflora isnt very hard, but requires decent lighting if you want to do do very well, and is a fast grower, so once it fills a good portion of the tank, you may need to start thinking about NPK fertilisation if you want to get of signs of deficiencies or just get it to grow faster.

 

[Dave Spencer]

Very roughly, starting with the most important, it is something like:

Light, carbon, NPK, traces (iron, boron, calcium etc....). Omit any one of the elements, and your plants will suffer.

Dave.

 

[Colin_T]

As fish food and waste break down in the water they produce ammonia, which is broken down by the aerobic filter bacteria and converted into nitrite and then nitrate. Plants can use any of these things as a nitrogen source.
The filter bacteria consume a lot of oxygen converting the ammonia into nitrite & nitrate, and produce a lot of CO2 as a by-product.
Lots of dry fish foods (flake and pellet foods) have phosphorus/ phosphates in and this is released when they break down in the water.
For the current tank setup with only a couple of plants in, there will probably be sufficient nitrogen, phosphorus and CO2 produced in the tank by the fish and filter bacteria.