10 Gallon Planted Tank Journal

[OliveFish05]

I get a little irritated with Seachem and retailers because they push Flourish so much and a lot of us get sucked into buying it without knowing it is just a micronutrient supplement. When someone sees “comprehensive” on the bottle they are led to believe it has everything needed. Sly marketing but misleading.

Plants need both macro (large) and micro (trace) nutrients for healthy growth. The more you play around with planted tanks you’ll hear things like “NPK,” which is short for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Carbon is also an important macro but because CO2 injection is a bit more expensive to do a lot of hobbyists don’t supplement that one, or they will dump toxic chemicals like Seachem Excel or Metricide into the tank because - again - clever but misleading marketing.

So you have your big three, NPK, and your micros. The Flourish you are dosing takes care of your micros and some of your potassium (K) requirements but doesn’t provide any meaningful nitrogen or phosphorus which are both extremely important. That’s why a lot of newer hobbyists don’t really see much improvement when they are dosing Flourish and nothing else. If you want strong plants with healthy leaves showing their best colors, you need to first take care of the macros. People with heavily-stocked tanks can get away with little to no fertilizer supplementation because the plants are using the nitrates and phosphates generated by the bio load. When the nutrient demand from the plants is higher than the supply from the bio load, that is when fertilizer supplementation becomes important to keep the plants healthy.

There are generally two ways for properly fertilizing a planted tank. DIY dry ferts (powders that you can order online) and liquid all-in-one fertilizer products. You will run into rabid fans of either method, I don’t really believe one is better than the other. What works better for one person may not work best for another. I personally mix my own dry ferts and have had amazing results but when I tried all-in-one products like NilocG Thrive I ran into issues even though countless others have amazing experiences with the stuff. Best advice I can give is to just pick one and see how it works for you. All-in-ones are simple quick options that take most of the calculations out of the task of fertilizing, but dosing dry ferts allows a person to micromanage how much they want of a specific compound in their tanks. There are several good online calculators like the one at RotalaButterfly that will tell you how much of each of your fertilizers to dose. All you have to do is enter in your tank size and what fertilizer you are using and it will tell you how many grams of that compound to add and how often.

One thing to be mindful of is that nuisance algae thrives off of nutrient imbalance within a tank. If you start dosing ferts and notice an algae problem developing you will need to either decrease the amount you are dosing or increase the other two points of the “triangle,” your lighting and carbon. If you want an easy to maintain low tech tank, stick with dosing just your macros and micros and keep a record of how much and how often you are dosing so you can adjust the dosage depending on when you start to see algae forming. If you want to experience explosive growth that will turn your tank into a jungle within a month or two you can crank the ferts way up but you will need to provide intense light and CO2 injection to allow the plants to use the increased fertilizers.

Start off small and work your way up. You won’t ruin anything. If you overdose your ferts and run into an algae problem just back off the ferts for a bit and do some large water changes to get the levels back down. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I’m no Tom Barr but I have a pretty decent amount of experience with both low and high tech planted tanks and will be happy to offer advice based on my experiences

Happy planting!

WOW! Ok, hmmmm. I will definitely have to look into my options more! I do have medium To high lighting, my light is a Nicrew SkyLED Plus. I do have some algae problems because of the light, but nothing out of hand. The setup with the Cories is only temporary, while the 40 fry grow up, which I think will only be about a month or two.

 

[BluewaterBoof]

Sounds good! What is your light schedule right now? A shorter photoperiod should help with the algae from the light until you get some more ferts in the tank to balance it out. For me, I tend to get some algae creep if I try to run the lights for longer than six hours and I've never really noticed any reason to run them for more than six.

If you have work/school that keeps you from being home during the day you can pick up a cheap outlet timer from a place like Walmart and use it to turn your light on later in the day while you're away from home so that the tank is ready for your viewing pleasure in the afternoon/evening.

I went back just now and noticed that you have swords in the tank. They require a huge amount of nutrients. You may have already noticed that their older leaves will melt away so that new ones can grow. Once you start meeting their nutrient needs through fertilization they will stop melting and being stunted. They will grow to enormous size as long as their needs are met. I had one in a 55gal and it grew so big I eventually pulled it and sold it because it was just crowding everything else out of the tank. Here is a photo of it to give you a sense of just how big they can get, and I'm sure some folks can get them even bigger. It was actually squished up against the front and back of the tank. For a sense of scale, a standard basketball is about 9.5" in diameter. That plant was about 24" tall if I pulled the leaves straight.

 

[OliveFish05]

Sounds good! What is your light schedule right now? A shorter photoperiod should help with the algae from the light until you get some more ferts in the tank to balance it out. For me, I tend to get some algae creep if I try to run the lights for longer than six hours and I've never really noticed any reason to run them for more than six.

I typically turn the light on around 10 in the morning each day, and run it for about 8 to 10 hours. I have only had the light about 3 weeks, and am working on remembering to turn out the light earlier.

If you have work/school that keeps you from being home during the day you can pick up a cheap outlet timer from a place like Walmart and use it to turn your light on later in the day while you're away from home so that the tank is ready for your viewing pleasure in the afternoon/evening.

Ooo a timer is a good thought! I am home most days, I homeschool and don’t have friends so I‘m not out of the house much.

I went back just now and noticed that you have swords in the tank. They require a huge amount of nutrients. You may have already noticed that their older leaves will melt away so that new ones can grow. Once you start meeting their nutrient needs through fertilization they will stop melting and being stunted. They will grow to enormous size as long as their needs are met. I had one in a 55gal and it grew so big I eventually pulled it and sold it because it was just crowding everything else out of the tank. Here is a photo of it to give you a sense of just how big they can get, and I'm sure some folks can get them even bigger. It was actually squished up against the front and back of the tank. For a sense of scale, a standard basketball is about 9.5" in diameter. That plant was about 24" tall if I pulled the leaves straight.

WOW!!! That is so big! Mine have grown quite a bit since I got them, I do use root tabs. I have definitely noticed older leaves beginning to rot though! Do you have any recommendations for a good liquid fertilizer? I am open to purchasing a Co2 setup, but I don’t quite know if that would be a good choice for beginner me

 

[PheonixKingZ]

Ooo a timer is a good thought! I am home most days, I homeschool and don’t have friends so I‘m not out of the house much.

Never realized how helpful a timer was, until I figured out how to use it on my Nicrew Marine LED. Some of the more expensive Nicrew lights have a timers.

 

[OliveFish05]

Never realized how helpful a timer was, until I figured out how to use it on my Nicrew Marine LED. Some of the more expensive Nicrew lights have a timers.

Ooo ok. I may just set a reminder on my IPad

 

[BluewaterBoof]

I typically turn the light on around 10 in the morning each day, and run it for about 8 to 10 hours. I have only had the light about 3 weeks, and am working on remembering to turn out the light earlier.



Ooo a timer is a good thought! I am home most days, I homeschool and don’t have friends so I‘m not out of the house much.

WOW!!! That is so big! Mine have grown quite a bit since I got them, I do use root tabs. I have definitely noticed older leaves beginning to rot though! Do you have any recommendations for a good liquid fertilizer? I am open to purchasing a Co2 setup, but I don’t quite know if that would be a good choice for beginner me

Root tabs are helpful with them and that’s what I had started out with but I noticed a huge improvement once I started dosing the tank.

It’s been a couple of years since I was really in the game, but I’m assuming NilocG is still a popular brand for all-in-one ferts. It looks like he has a newer version, called Thrive C, which apparently has a non-glutaraldehyde carbon compound in it for low-tech tanks. Wouldn’t hurt to start out with that and see how things progress for you.

CO2 injection is easy. It is just an expensive investment. A tank, regulator, tubing, and diffuser can run well over $100 for budget systems and hundreds for the fancy ones. The hardest part of pressurized CO2 is parting with the money haha

 

[BluewaterBoof]

I also just want to say not to sell yourself short. Don’t approach things with the mindset that you don’t know if you should do something as a beginner. Everyone who has ever done something started as a beginner Just do your research and ask questions if you have any concerns.

 

[OliveFish05]

Root tabs are helpful with them and that’s what I had started out with but I noticed a huge improvement once I started dosing the tank.

It’s been a couple of years since I was really in the game, but I’m assuming NilocG is still a popular brand for all-in-one ferts. It looks like he has a newer version, called Thrive C, which apparently has a non-glutaraldehyde carbon compound in it for low-tech tanks. Wouldn’t hurt to start out with that and see how things progress for you.

CO2 injection is easy. It is just an expensive investment. A tank, regulator, tubing, and diffuser can run well over $100 for budget systems and hundreds for the fancy ones. The hardest part of pressurized CO2 is parting with the money haha

Hmm ok! Thank you, I will certainly look into those!

 

[OliveFish05]

I also just want to say not to sell yourself short. Don’t approach things with the mindset that you don’t know if you should do something as a beginner. Everyone who has ever done something started as a beginner Just do your research and ask questions if you have any concerns.

Thanks. I have been keeping fish for a while now (well, only been a year, but it feels like it’s been a long time!) but I am rather new to the whole plant fertilizer and Co2 and lighting

 

[BluewaterBoof]

I know what you mean! Watching every part of a tank every day can make the years feel like eternity haha

Strong light and CO2 isn’t super necessary for a lot of plants to do well. A lot of the more common aquarium plants out there get by just fine with lower levels of light, although the growth is much slower and tends to be more “leggy,” as someone once described it to me years ago, meaning the weaker the light the more the plants will stretch up towards the light source. If you hammer them with strong light, on the other hand, you get faster growth that is lower and bushier, as the plants don’t have to stretch to get their light.

CO2 isn’t really needed if you don’t blast the plants with light, but it is fun to play with and even lower light tanks will benefit from a bit of added bubbly. Just depends on how much effort you want to put into the tank i.e. how much time do you want to spend trimming your plants haha Keep in mind, a lot of local shops will give you store credit if you bring in your trimmings and whatnot, and if you have something like Facebook you can pull up local aquarium groups and sell your trimmings and overgrown plants for cold hard cash. It won’t replace your day job but it’s nice to have a little bit of extra cash coming in and it gets you to meet up with others who share a passion with the hobby

 

[OliveFish05]

Just depends on how much effort you want to put into the tank i.e. how much time do you want to spend trimming your plants haha Keep in mind, a lot of local shops will give you store credit if you bring in your trimmings and whatnot, and if you have something like Facebook you can pull up local aquarium groups and sell your trimmings and overgrown plants for cold hard cash. It won’t replace your day job but it’s nice to have a little bit of extra cash coming in and it gets you to meet up with others who share a passion with the hobby

I do currently have lots of time on my hands! My tanks are one of my “homeschool projects”. A bit of extra cash sure would be nice I would totally be interested in investing in Co2, as I do sorts blast my plants with light... oops haha.

I know what you mean! Watching every part of a tank every day can make the years feel like eternity haha

Definitely! A very enjoyable eternity though at least!

 

[hansgruber7]

Personally, I don't think you need CO2. For what you are trying to do, it is an unnecessary complication, risk, and expense. I highly recommend getting a timer for your light though. It's cheap and makes your life so much easier. It also provides some consistency which is good. That huge sword someone posted earlier was beautiful. I would not have been able to bring myself to pull it out. I have a beautiful one that is starting to outgrow my 20 gallon, so I should offload it but I love it too much.

 

[BluewaterBoof]

That huge sword someone posted earlier was beautiful. I would not have been able to bring myself to pull it out.

Haha I had to do it man. It was enormous and smushed up against the front and back of the tank. It was so big the dude that bought it had to bring a 5gal bucket ?