Seachem products.

[Stan510]

I've seen a lot of vids on Seachem and this was closer to what I expect of its use. I liked what he said about dry fertilizers- the other side of the coin and then you have Seachem's concentrate formulated for you and additives that make it taken up by plants faster than say what you might mix on your own. Additives that keep the bottle useful until the last drop. For most people and one plant tank,they can last months. Additives that won't poison your fish.
For those who have many plant aquariums bulk might be best. I don't know.
I think their iron works great. Results you can see.

 

[StevenF]

Hestates that he has been increasing the dose to try and get more red color in his plants. Note that the red color in plants doesn't come from iron. Many people have tried doupling, tripplingng, and quadrupling the iron dose and not seeing any improvment in reds. However I have seen a post were the nitrate dose was reduced and that resulted in better reds.

He also states that some of the leaves are not as wide as he was expecting. A good reason for that is that the recommended seachem dose provides 0.001ppm of zinc. Plants Need about 0.02ppm. Zinc deficiency causes smaller leaves. The same problem also exists for copper. The seachem dose provides. 0.001ppm of copper when plants need 0.006ppm. And for molybdenum Sachem uses sodium molybdate. Sodium molybdate is not compatible with the other sulfate ingredients in the bottle. Making it unavailable to plants.

He also states he has been increase the dose to get more growth. Well even if you triple the dose you are still deficient on zinc. you would have to increase the dose by 20 times to get enough zinc.

Also note He needs 9 bottle of seachem products. IN my experience making my own macro, micr, GH fertilizers you only need 3. I have listed some of the issue I have found with their fertilizer (zinc, copper, and molybdenum but there are others. Seachem dosing guid calls for all of these bottles because they are tying to correct some of the deficiencies in there fertilizers.

My tank uses RO water and an inert substrate. I tried 4 different fertilizer including Seachem and I couldn't get any to work. Most fertilizer companies assume your tap water and substrate will provide some of the nutrients. But I was using pure RO water and I didn't use a soil substrate. so they didn't work. My firstatempt at making a fertilizer was a clone of Flourish but I adjusted all the nutrient levels to get it close to the ballance plants like. and I used a different iron compound. And sodium Molybdate was dosed seperately. That worked very well . I has since started testing a Chelated mix similar to a new product by GLA. If you get it it (It is a USA companyt)ig would definitely work better than Seacem .trace.

The well water used in the video probably provides most of the nutrients that are not in the seachem fertilizers.

 

[Stan510]

Still some say iron is needed to turn plants red. Green Aqua has a half hour vid on it and I listened the whole half hour and he said "Iron for red". Me? I think iron just does plants nothing but good. When doing good the red pigments in bright light show. On land,in my years of horticulture? red usually is a response to intense sunlight and - stress! Many cactus and succulents naturally go red in summer and revert back to green in the weak UV of winter here in California. Maybe somebody should experiment with UV light on aquarium plants?
The aquarium plants are very needy compared to anything grown on land. Unless we are talking some summer lawns or Tomatos. I do worry that what's best for plants..might not be best for my fish. I took iron pills ( prescribed) for one or two days and had to stop as it caused stomach pain and I could taste the iron for hours. Same for zinc..I had a metallic taste from that.
There are articles about CO2 also causing damage to fish. Shortens the lifespan for one. Combine the two of additives and Co2,and you don't know what will happen.
But the iron seems to be the one everybody agrees is needed. Potassium in second and all the rest would be if your water lacks any important trace.

 

[GaryE]

I use no Seachem products, but as an aside, I do keep fish from a region with iron rich soils - the famous red laterite soils of coastal central West Africa. Adding a grain of chelated iron can increase egg production here, although that info is tempered by us not generally knowing what minerals are in our water for such things to interact with, even if we know the hardness or tds. I'm sure heavy doses of iron could have negatives, but the iron trick has also seemed to work as a spawning trigger for some South American Apistogramma, whose home waters are nothing like what their West African counterparts swim in. I know "I did this and that happened" can be coincidence or luck, but I did this a dozen times and it worked for about ten of them. So there's enough of a pattern that it's interesting for someone to explore.

 

[StevenF]

There are articles about CO2 also causing damage to fish. Shortens the lifespan for one. Combine the two of additives and Co2,and you don't know what will happen.

there are a lot of people using high light and CO2 with plants and fish with fertilizers. For those following the Estimative index dosing methode they generally dose quite a lot of fertilizer. Generally the fish appear healthy and live about the normal life span. Generally monitor your CO2 levels and don't go way overboard on fertilizer dosing your fish shouldn't notice anything is wrong. Fish need all the nutrients plants need +6 others. Generally if an animal needs a nutrient to live they can tolerate quite a lot of it without any issues. However if it is an element fish don't need they are much more sensitive to it.

At to iron supplements I have an iron deficiency issue and take 2 pills of iron sulfate a day to avoid going anemic. I don't new them. I swallow them whole with water and feel and fast nothing. From what I have learned over the years. 2ppm of iron in the water should be OK for most fish. If you use Iron DTPA which lasts a lot longer than the iron glucoaont Seachem uses you only need about 0.1ppm for plants to do well. Adding more don't improve the color of my red root floaters. For iron gluconate people generally recommend a dose of about 1ppm with testing to very the levels because it dosn't last long in the water.

Naturally water very low levels of iron in it because it rapidly oxidized and precipitate out of the water.

 

[Stan510]

I never did ask anybody if they took iron pills. Interesting to read you felt nothing. I also looked an old bottle of Iron+Zinc chelated I have. Almost empty,it goes fast when you use it for a whole garden. I did try it once on the aquarium and didn't see the fast results like I had with Seachem Iron. It also didn't say if it was DPTA,glutamate or not.

 

[Stan510]

An update. I've been using a home garden iron (EPTA) with zinc) and the results show much more on plants that root into the substrate than those who are epiphytes. In fact, go down an inch into the substrate and you see a layer of iron has set in!
Swords are out of their minds happy, mosses are growing faster.
With fish I can say "I have enough". But plants are now "just one more" territory.