When to start fertilizing?

Re: When to start fertilizing?

You do not need to dose as much, but dosing excesses is not why you have algae.

Try adding some mulm to the bottom layer and to the filter when you start the tank.

You can use mulm from any tank, it's the dirt in the songe filters, or the settled dirt in a vacuumed water change bucket, brown, wet gooey stuff.

That is pure bacteria and a little organic matter.

That is all that is missing from a new tank's gravel.
So add a little bit.

Now your tank is cycled.
No wait, no worry.

Also, add as many plants(even cheapy plants till the others fill in) from the first day.That is the most common mistake new and old folks alike make when doing a new tank.

Substrates do take a little more time till they settle in and do well.

Plant roots quickly grow back out as a rule also, but they need nutrients to do this. So established root systems can help, but we can prune weekly and remove these same roots without any ill effects(but you need to do the water changes asap right afterwards).

So new tanks need: mulm, lots of plants, and lots of water changes for the first 4-8 weeks.

Good CO2, good fert dosing(you can add about 1/2 the macros initially for the first week), etc will help.

Once the tankj settles in, then you will be good.
Attack any and all algae asap(don't wait, a small problem is less work than a big one). Add amano shrimp after a few days etc.

It takes more work to whip a tank into shape, there is no avoiding that, but then once settled in, we can be a bit more lazy.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: When to start fertilizing?

I pull up plants and cut the tops off and replant only the tops.
Some folks top the plants and leave the stumps to branch out.
I rarely do that.

The mulm cycles the tank instantly, does not matter what type of tank it is.
Plants are helped by having a NH4 processing/cycling back up, the bacteria and this also provided other plant detritus and other fish waste a means to be decomposed without waiting long for the bacteria to do it's job.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: When to start fertilizing?

Yes, but there is yet another reason to do a water change.

Low O2.

It might be less due to NH4, and more to do with low O2 from pulling up reduce ions like Fe2+, NH4+, etc, reduce organic matter, all this material is pulled up and rapidly removes the O2 both chemically and biologically.

That is a possible signal for algae I postulate.

I've noted that high O2 does not inhibit algae at all.
Nor does high CO2 and neither induces algae at ambient.

But I have not investigated low O2, we get low CO2 from plant uptake, not an issue but low O2 is quite another matter.

I can remove the O2 by bubbling N2 gas into the water and deoxygenate it.
But this is a no fish/critter tank for sure.

I'm not saying that low O2 is the cause of all algae, it might be a contributor, it also might cause certain species to grow, but NH4 definitely is a causitive agent for algae at relatively low levels.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

Re: When to start fertilizing?

Yes, high CO2 do not inhibit algae growth by itself.
Algae, like plants, grow better at high CO2, but the plants grow much better as their needs and uptake is different.

Sure, it confuses the plant, they adapt to a stable level of CO2, if it's all over, they have trouble, algae much less so.


Regards,
Tom Barr