Plant Noob Questions And Advice

confusion

Fishaholic
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I've had a few planted tanks up and running for a while now, with default lighting <.5wpg. The tanks aren't heavily planted, but I'm planning to change that. I recently bought satellite fixtures for my 55G and my 30G cube. 130w for the 55G and 80W for the 30G.

I bought some microswords to go for the carpet look, and some misc larger plants to go with my existing amazon swords, moneywort and anacrhis. My tanks have standard gravel substrate.

My questions are these:
Assuming I need to supplement CO2, what is the best method? Are either of these worthwhile?
http://www.petsolutions.com/Plant+Gro+CO2+...-I-C-13-C-.aspx
http://www.petsolutions.com/Natural+Aquari...-I-C-13-C-.aspx

From reading some of the other posts, it seems like gravel is an ok substrate. Should I add some of the laterite or other plant friendly substrate?

What ferts should I use? If I go for the fourish, do I need anything else? I see that there is flourish excel (carbon), flourish trace, flourish iron, flourish potassium, etc.

Thanks much for the help!
 
My questions are these:
Assuming I need to supplement CO2, what is the best method? Are either of these worthwhile?
http://www.petsolutions.com/Plant+Gro+CO2+...-I-C-13-C-.aspx
http://www.petsolutions.com/Natural+Aquari...-I-C-13-C-.aspx

The first link is a good to go co2 system.. personally i think these are garbage because you can make a co2 system for so much cheaper and your coming out with the same results.. just depends on wether or not you wanna put the effort into making a co2 system. ps, they are easy to make.

as for the second link it is a source of organic carbon...it is different then actually injecting co2..if your planning to inject co2 there isn't much need for this..

From reading some of the other posts, it seems like gravel is an ok substrate. Should I add some of the laterite or other plant friendly substrate?

adding laterite will be beneficial, but there are better things that you can add to your tank which will be much more beneficial to your plants. This would include premixed substrates that you can buy from your LFS or online. I do recommend adding something to your gravel or actually using an all-in-one substrate, especially if you want those microswords to grow well.

What ferts should I use? If I go for the fourish, do I need anything else? I see that there is flourish excel (carbon), flourish trace, flourish iron, flourish potassium, etc.

Flourish is a trace fertilizer which contains micro nutrients that are hard to find normally in the water. These nutrients are also found in plant substrates(hence the benefit of them). However flourish does not contain any macro nutrients (n-p-k) which your plants will also need. Now in a low light setup these nutrients are supplied from fish waste..etc but in a high light tank with co2 your plants will grow faster and need more of these nutrients. So I suggest you read the EI pinned article at the top of this forum to get an idea as to what your plants will need and the different options you have to go about this.

by the way, flourish excel is similar to the second link u supplied up above. you won't need flourish iron as there should be enough in flourish. flourish potassium/nitrate..etc are sources of your macro nutrients.

goodluck hope this helps
 

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