Plant Food

I use those tabs you bury in the substrate.  They last about 6 months.  In addition I add EasyCarbo instead of pratting around with CO2.  But if you have medium lighting or above you should be adding CO2!

Cheers SteveS.

Hi Chucklett, I was mike on the old forum. I posted many problems that you, sue and others kindly helped me with. Think there was also a Mike with a capital M so if you see him tell him I'm sorry for stealing his user name lol.

I've looked at Co2 and decided its to expensive and fiddly. Want to get easycarbo and other supplements but a bit concerned about my shrimp especially as there are so many young. Might wait and see how these fair up first.

I'll still very much undecided, I'll mull it over for a week or two see how the plants cope. I'm hoping the first lot died of due to a new set up however I did use water and a piece of sponge from my other tank when setting up.

Did you buy the plants online? I've heard that chemicals are used to kill snails at some of the online retailers

In my 108 litre tank I used easycarbo every morning and API Leafzone once a week ..... in my 450litre I have just started using a Co2 system but havent added anything else for the plants yet as I like to leave the tank to mature a month or so before adding anything .... if you don't intend using Co2 or don't have to due to having a lower end lighting system like I have in my 108 then just got the easycarbo and a good fertiliser

I've ordered some easycarbo and some profito. I'll start on small doses and build up over time.

I use Flora Boost made by Interpret and tend to do so every other water change (i.e. every 2/3 weeks).  Also I dose my tank to around 50% of their recommendation and yet my plants (amazon sword, vallis - both regular & giant, java fern, java moss, crypts) seem to be doing pretty well 

I give away vallis on a regular basis (and amazon sword occasionally) to other friends who have an aquarium and haven't needed to buy any new plants for ages.

My lighting (2 x 39watt T5s) is on for 8 hours a day.

Hope this helps someone else.

Mark

Hi Mike,

I understand that  Glossostigma elatinoides requires pretty high light levels to thrive. I don't know about the helferi (I find the Tropica website quite useful for identifying the needs of the more commonly available plants). I think the glosso can be really difficult to grow successfully in anything other than a high tech tank (HO lighting, CO2 injection, fertiliser dosing).

I was told that a low light 'alternative', is Cryptocorne parva. It took a while to get going in my tank and is now spreading, though not as quickly as I've read it can with CO2. This is probably because I only have T8 lights, so my tank is considered to have low light levels. Also it is about 40cm deep, so even less light gets to the parva than the rest of my plants.

I don't know if there are any other 'ground cover' plants that do well in low light conditions - I've not succeeded in finding any.

I inject CO2 and dose my tank with fertiliser, even though I have a low light tank. I started doing this when I realised that the soft tap water in our area had virtually no nutrients in it (for plants) and I couldn't stock my tank quickly enough for the fish to provide the plants with 'fertiliser'.

I use small dosing syringes (baby dosing syringes from the chemist) for measuring out my liquid fertilisers. Though with 170l of water, I measure out about 2.5ml at a time.

Hope this helps.