Has anyone used these fertilizer type products?

in my 29g tank which is heavily planted with DIY co2, i use (the co2,) Flourish liquid, and the gravel is mixed with pure laterite.. that is all, and i have outstanding growth.

Buying water in a bottle is expensive. More so when it's shipped. Buying bulk dry nutrients is about 40-50X cheaper.

Flourish makes a great trace mineral additive. Doesn't have a lot of macros in it. If you don't know what macros or traces are then take a few minutes and read my Guide.

My experience with anything Jungle makes is that it is cheap crap. If you want good ferts get some of Greg Watson's stuff. It's all you need and it kicks butt.

You can use the flourish comprehensive plant supplement for trace elements but it has phosphate in it so be careful. It is also very concentrated to read the dosing carefully. As far as macro nutrients go people will tell you how important they are but it all depends on what your doing to determine what your plant need.
First if you are just starting a planted tank avoid excessive macro nutrients such as phosphate and nitrate. Potassium is always needed in relatively high amounts.
Different stages of plant growth require different amounts of nutrients.
Kent makes a trace element liquid.
It also depends on how big your tank is to decide on what your going to use to fertilize. 40g and smaller any of the expensive pet store liquid ferts that suit you needs will be best. But if you have multiple tanks or a BIG tank than you should think of using dry ferts from one of the guys on this site.
It makes sense but some times you just don't have room to have a couple of 1lb bags of dry fertilizer laying around.

FishyMatty said:

You can use the flourish comprehensive plant supplement for trace elements but it has phosphate in it so be careful.

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Since you are offering help:
What specific evidence do have that shows this poster's issue has anything to do with excess PO4, what does excess PO4 look like in a plant tank? How specifically is it bad? In any way?

Inexperience and repetition of old myths will not do.
That does not help the hobby.

Here's my excess PO4 tank, at 1-3 ppm of PO4 dosed via KH2PO4:
Been this way for 15 years, where are my issues?

3 ppm of PO4/35ppm NO3 (2001):


2 ppm of PO4/30ppm NO3 (2004)


1.4 ppm PO4/10ppm NO3 in a non CO2 plant tank(2000):


1.2 ppm/15ppm NO3 (1996)


All well in "excess" for algae and bioavailable in the water column as inorganic forms.

It is also very concentrated to read the dosing carefully. As far as macro nutrients go people will tell you how important they are but it all depends on what your doing to determine what your plant need.
First if you are just starting a planted tank avoid excessive macro nutrients such as phosphate and nitrate. Potassium is always needed in relatively high amounts.

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So since you bring it up, what constitutes "excessive macro nutrients"?
Got any numbers, eg real data? Or is "excessive" anything from 0.1ppm to 100ppm?

I have real numbers that are verifiable.
Numbers that I've been testing and measuring pretty carefully for decades now. But not just numbers, results as well.

If you have evidence, examples of test, experiments, dosing, measurements, test kit calibrations, pictures of tanks before and after ........heck anything.......cough it up, offer some support.

After doing this a long time, please do not take it personally, (however you are offering folks advice and adding this stuff in here), I read post and folks repeat the same old myths from 30+ years ago.

There are very simple test you may do to disprove this.
I'm not sure why folks believe anything that's drivel on the web assuming it must be right cause it sounds good and the person has a web site.

There are research papers that support the observations above in terms of NO3/PO4 and no algae and lots of plant growth in shallow lakes with 50% or more aquatic vegetation sediment coverage.

You add more nutrients and you get more weeds.

Different stages of plant growth require different amounts of nutrients.

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So since most are all vegetatively grown from clones, what stages might these be?

More plant biomass needs more nutrients added at a given rate, but they do not really need more of one particular type.

Kent makes a trace element liquid.
It also depends on how big your tank is to decide on what your going to use to fertilize. 40g and smaller any of the expensive pet store liquid ferts that suit you needs will be best. But if you have multiple tanks or a BIG tank than you should think of using dry ferts from one of the guys on this site.
It makes sense but some times you just don't have room to have a couple of 1lb bags of dry fertilizer laying around.

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So those name brands have everything you need to enhance the growth?
Not always, many lack PO4 or K, or NO3.

I'm asking some basic questions so you question them yourself and the new person can avoid buying into these myths as well. You can offer better advice that hones in on the real issues: why the plants are not growing well.
I've yet to find a concentration of NO3 or PO4 that causes the plants to turn brown, have you? I killed some shrimp(LD50 after 3 days), but was not able to kill any fish at high levels of NO3 (about 160pppm as NO3 from KNO3), PO4 never did anything up to 20ppm. Others misplaced a decimal and dosed 200ppm instead of 20ppm of NO3 for a few months with no ill effects.

I've seen folks waste a lot of time playing with NO3/PO4 removers, etc and measuring these with junk test kits, micro manage etc, yet miss the bigger issues, CO2, too much light, not enough routine maintenance and gardening.

Rex's site offers the nutrients, some simple routines and the basics.
They cost about the price of the 1 bottle of 500mls of Seachem Flourish.

That does help the hobby and he tries things out and can tell you if what I say is true or not. You mean well i know, you can learn more, and so can we all. So please do not think I'm trying to discourage that part. Just question it a lot more.


Regards,
Tom Barr

Flourish has 0.01% available phosphate. That's not a whole lot. So little in fact that you could dump a whole 250 ml bottle into a 20 gallon aquarium and not dose the necessary amount of phosphate.

250 ml X .01% (same as .0001) = 0.025 ml of phosphates in the bottle.

Also Flourish is only has 2.6002% active ingredients. The rest is water. So I would not call it concentrated. Not in the least.

And since it contains more Chlorine than anything else if one was going to go all silly and stupid and worry about something they should worry about the 1.15% chlorine in it.

And when you are starting a tank you should dose the tank just like any other time. Based on plant mass of course. If you have a lot of fast growing stem plants, which is the best way to start a tank, then they are going to need food. And that means macro nutrients. And that means phosphates and nitrates.

Sorry fishmatty but you are pretty close to 100% wrong in your advice.

I think I'm just lucky, but I don't use any ferts or CO2 and my plants are growing like weeds. I trim a lot of plant material every week. I used ferts early on and found that it was very difficult to control the algae.

experience- When i tare up all my plants and replant/re-scape my tanks I learned after the first few times that adding any phosphate would end up in all rocks and/or wood covered with algae. Since I have completely replanted/re-scaped my tanks only adding trace elements and potassium with high concentrations of co2 and high light with only minimal algae if any. I know that my tanks are getting phosphate from fish food and waste but by not adding extra I found my plants do much better and the algae stays away.
As far as the concentration of flourish I admit I didn't know the amounts of nutrients in it but just the dosing suggestion so by that I assumed it was highly concentrated.

Out of all the namebrand ferts, I trust and use Seachem. One of the few companies that agrees that phosphate levels are not a leading cause of algae, they have excellent customer service.

Now I only use some of their products, like Flourish Excel. Most of the ferts I use are dry ferts, like from Rex. Like Rex said, I don't like paying for the extra water.