Posted by admin | Posted in Plants | Posted on 11-03-2010
What is the best plant food for live aquarium plants?
I hear that the live plants live off the fish waste in the substrate (with I siphon weekly) and use the Carbon Dioxide (that comes through via the air pump). As well as this, the plants get the not so strong light from the window, and in the evening I have a Arcadia Arc Light.
Do my plants need extra nutrition? If so, what?
Any info would be grateful.
Thanks!
Plants need three things to grow – light, CO2 and nutrients. Light is provided by your lighting system, obviously. CO2 and nutrients can be provided a variety of ways – fish naturally provide them as they respire and create waste. If more is needed, CO2 can also be added via a CO2 system and nutrients can be added via a fertilizer. An air pump does not add CO2 – in fact, it drives CO2 out of the aquarium.
What’s best depends really on your tank. A simple, low-light tank that contains easy plants generally doesn’t need any additional supplements, though it can benefit from fertilizer that includes potassium (K) and iron (Fe) to round out the nutrients they need. A tank that contains plants that demand a lot of light and CO2 would need a CO2 system and fertilizers that provide them all the necessary nutrients (nitrogen, phosphate, boron, zinc, magnesium, etc etc). Contrary to what catx said, no one fertilizer can provide all the nutrients plants need, due to the way some nutrients react to one another when kept together.
What plants have you got? Hardier ones will do fine without any interference, like java fern, others must have help!
For CO2 you can get CO2 systems, although they do get very technical and I have yet to get my head round it! When people have started discussing it around me and started going on about good sources of where to get CO2 fire extinguishers to do it DIY, I tend to glaze over.
For fertilisers, there’s a wealth of them on the market, but the one that has been recommended is TPN, or Tropica Plant Nutrition, these contain ALL the nutrients a plant needs. Many other products actually only contain trace amounts of it and aren’t that great. See here:
http://www.aquaessentials.co.uk/tropica-plant-nutrition-500ml-p-1036.html?zenid=4f174q7n5oa8pi7iq09t9o30b0
One thing you MUST note though is that if you over dose or don’t have quite enough plants, or indeed put a tablet too shallow near the surface of the subtrate, it can cause an algae outbreak!
References :
Plants need three things to grow – light, CO2 and nutrients. Light is provided by your lighting system, obviously. CO2 and nutrients can be provided a variety of ways – fish naturally provide them as they respire and create waste. If more is needed, CO2 can also be added via a CO2 system and nutrients can be added via a fertilizer. An air pump does not add CO2 – in fact, it drives CO2 out of the aquarium.
What’s best depends really on your tank. A simple, low-light tank that contains easy plants generally doesn’t need any additional supplements, though it can benefit from fertilizer that includes potassium (K) and iron (Fe) to round out the nutrients they need. A tank that contains plants that demand a lot of light and CO2 would need a CO2 system and fertilizers that provide them all the necessary nutrients (nitrogen, phosphate, boron, zinc, magnesium, etc etc). Contrary to what catx said, no one fertilizer can provide all the nutrients plants need, due to the way some nutrients react to one another when kept together.
References :