Over the last few weeks, I have been putting real plants in my tanks and have now just removed the last of the fake ones - though they are in a box just in case. I have used the "easy" section on Tropica's website for inspiration, and also trying out Richard W's idea of putting some in pots.
Sue's a "newbie!"
Whee Hee.
She's asking dumb questions.
ERROR: Does not compute. DANGER: Will Robinson!Be at ease my little fearful one, we have a great and knowledgeable hero amongst us who will answer your questions...
No, hold on a minute, that's you. How do you expect all this stuff to work if you go and change the rules. [moan]Moderator's
[/moan], [mumble]Never a by your leave[/mumble], [murmer]just up and ask questions[/murmer]
Sorry, fun and games over. To begin with, I would like to apologise for the delay in answering your question, but this time of year is always difficult for me with Wimbledon on 38 hours a day; Then once every four years, we get the World Cup and soon, coming to a screen near you, the Commonwealth Games! And the reply got a bit longer than I was anticipating [EDIT: A lot longer...]
I just know that you are aware of the following, but I have put it here as a brief introduction for any other plant newbies who may be lurking around. Aquatic plants require a number of nutrients in order to survive. It requires a lot of some nutrients and a little of the others. These are called, rather unimaginatively, macro and micro nutrients. According to Wikipaedia, the Macro Nutrients are : nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and sulphur (S). The Micro Nutrients are : boron (B), chlorine (Cl), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), zinc (Zn) and nickel (Ni).
Now to the questions. Obviously I can't use root tabs for the vast majority of these plants. I have a bottle of Flourish for micro-nutrients. The two larger tanks are both stocked quite heavily so is that enough for the macro-nutrients or should I be adding something else?
Aquatic plants are more adaptable as to the source for these nutrients over their terrestrial equivalents. Rather than having to rely on elaborate rooting systems they can absorb these nutrients directly from the water column; But, regardless of whether they root in the substrate or not, their requirements are the same. So thinking about this logically, we can provide these nutrients via the roots using a root tab or utilising nutrients "built-in" to the substrate; Or we can use a water-borne solution such as Flourish to provide them; Or we can cover all our bases by providing both. If you have a mix of these types of plants, this is probably the sensible way forward.
The "au naturel" source for the macro nutrients, is mixed. We get P and K from fishfood, N from nitrates, Ca and Mg from the "hardness" in our water and S from... I'm not really sure where the sulphur comes from... finally oxygen (O) and carbon (C) comes from the natural respiration of organisms within our tanks and from natural gas-exchange at the surface. The latter two item (C and O) aren't normally listed as nutrients for some reason.
That should partially answer your question. Unfortunately, it's the part of the question to which you more or less provided the answer. The second part of the question, the part you don't appear to know, is "Should I add some more, if so, how much?" This is one of those open ended questions that it is impossible for a third party to answer, It depends upon so many variables that the only sensible answer to "How much" is "Enough!" Plants have a list of requirements, we have seen some of them regarding diet, there are others like temperature, type and quantity of light provided, disturbance by fish, hardness of water, and so-on. A plant will grow until one of these becomes a limiting factor, It's called the "Law of the Minimum". If a plant is short of Boron, it doesn't matter how much manganese you throw at it, it will still struggle. "Hey stupid, I want Boron not Manganese!"
What would nice is general analysis kit so we could test values for everything. It would be pretty expensive though, setting up our own biochemical lab. Being an ex-Biochemist, you may have one at home though
So we use an alternative. We can check a list such as
THIS ONE to cross-reference symptoms of a disorder in our plants with a list of nutrients that will give this effect and adjust our supplements accordingly.
NOTE: Just a note about Flourish. The indication here is that Flourish is one product. It is not. It is a family of products:
- Flourish
- Flourish Excel
- Flourish Iron
- Flourish Nitrogen
- Flourish Potassium
- Flourish Phosphorus
Each will provide only some of the nutrients.
The betta's tank is very understocked with just one betta and a small snail. Should I be adding anything to that? And what about the LED light, java fern grows OK but will the other plants in there die off through lack of light?
The addition of plant supplements isn't really related to stocking levels, it depends on whether there are enough nutrients; As only some of these are related to fish and their feeding, we still need to allow for the other stuff on the list.
As for your light... The manufacturer might know the output from such a device, they may even tell you what the output was if you asked them nicely (but don't rely on it). I could only guess. And it would be a wild blind stab-in-the-dark at that. I can only offer the following. Fluorescent tubes, T5 and T8 anyway, are mature reliable technology, T8 from the 1920's and T5 from the 1940's believe it or not. LED for incident lighting (ie lighting spaces, not the power-on status of MrSue's Hi-Fi0 is new and constantly changing. New devices are being developed constantly, old devices are becoming cheaper to manufacture. So the older, and cheaper a device is, the less likely it is to be of any real value to a plant-grower like yourself.
Finally, (voices-off: "Thank God!"). CO
2. If we are going to be using state-of-art technology like
I'd go with the ColinB Method ©:
Step 1. Buy a plant you like the look of and plant it.
Step 2. If it dies, throw it away.
Step 3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until it doesn't die.
Works every time for me!
The horticultural equivalent of the"Rhythm Method"
, there seems to be little point to getting serious enough to add CO
2. Your large tank is too big to use the cheap fermentation type in any case. If you become a serious planted tank boffin, you would need a pressurised supply. If not, I don't have a particular issue with this; Some of us bought a tank to keep fish, the plants are solely to keep the fish happy. It's more or less my approach too. I have zero interest in the plants themselves, I just don't like the artificial ones.
Topic: Plants in my tanks (Read 6905 times) 15 replies
September 27, 2012, 05:11:57 PM
