Help With Plant Fertilisers

[KieranBoyne]

Aha! Just remembered something. As my swords are heavy root feeders, i moved some gravel from the front to the back. Where the swords are so they would have more substrate depth. When i agitate the substrate it normally clouds a teensy bit but clears quickly. Not this time. Very unusual

 

[SO19Firearms]

As my swords are heavy root feeders

 

[daizeUK]

Why the sad face?

 

[KieranBoyne]

Errmmm i'm SO lost right now.. Care to elaborate on that SO19? Am I wrong or something?? Am I doing something wrong???

 

[daizeUK]

To the best of my knowledge, plants such as Amazon swords and Cryptocorynes have a reputation for being 'heavy root feeders'.  
 
However like all aquatic plants they are perfectly capable of taking in nutrients through their leaves and probably prefer to do, as it is more efficient to transport the nutrients this way - as long as there are sufficient nutrients in the water column.
 
For instance I use EI dosing and have plenty of nutrients in my water column.  I don't bother with root tabs or fancy nutrient-rich substrates.  I have my crypts in plain old sand and they thrive (can't speak for swords).  
 
However if there are insufficient nutrients in the water column then I would expect that crypts/swords might particularly benefit from added root-based nutrition.
 
That's my understanding but I'd be interested to hear other answers.  A sad face doesn't tell us very much!

 

[DrRob]

Indeed, our tanks tend to run as a closed system, unless the substrate is fairly deep and has very poor flow it will tend to gradually equalise with the water column over time, so the nutrient rich substrates will always only allow a period of time of benefit without the water column being right. A good nutrient rich substrate could help iron out variations in the column if you're not that reliable with the fertiliser doses though. I have swords growing in sand in an EI tank, and in cat litter with no additives, and in aquasoil in a low tech. They're doing best in the sand......

 

[KieranBoyne]

Thanks for the replies!! Everythings going good. Other than my tank being cloudy. I made a thread about it so no need to post here and go off topic. My anubias appears to be growing quicker than my swords at the moment.. Really weird

 

[DrRob]

They do that occasionally. Swords sulk and anubius do random growth spurts.

 

[Mamashack]

My anubias has grown amazingly recently so much so that I have just cut some rhizome off and tied it to another piece of mopani wood. Will the old anubias continue to grow or have I just removed it's growing point?
 
Side note: I've been very brave and dosed every day and I have to say that I've never seen such healthy green colours other than when the plants first went in! Thanks for the encouragement to abandon under-dosing!
 
This may be a silly question but there's lots of talk about dense planting and light planting. Is there a formula for deciding what you've got? I ask because of the difference in dosing APF Plant Nutrition in liquid form for light and heavy planting and I'm not sure how to decide what I've got. 

 

[SO19Firearms]

A sad face doesn't tell us very much!

hehe told you enough - you worked it all through in the reply.

IMO the term "Heavy root feeder" makes it sound like the answer to some kind of problem - which it isn't.
"Heavy root feeder that will do perfectly well by dosing the water column properly not least for the benefit of all the other plants in the tank" often seems to get reduced to "Heavy root feeder"

TBH I agree that plants like swords and crypts benefit from a nutrient rich substrate, it gives them options and a buffer for when things go wrong in the water column - I just don't like to see 'HRF' as an answer