Plant fertilisers, are they worth it?

[ella777]

Hi, I'm planning on completely planting up my tank, adding more low demanding plants and wood.
What are peoples opinions on fertilisers? Are they necessary at all, if so, which ones are good/recommended? I don't want to spend loads of money if I don't have to. The tank is 200L so it needs to be a large(r) bottle, thanks!

 

[MaloK]

I use the Seachem Flourish system, Excel, Iron, trace.

Even at a 1/4 doses I can see a pretty notable difference in frequency, size and speed of new leaves sprouts.

The light plays a major role for sure, but without it, it's a lot slower.

 

[Uberhoust]

I use the Seachem root tabs but nothing else. I am not very consistent with dosing, likely every 6 months. I find the longer you leave the plants alone the better they grow.

 

[Essjay]

I use Seachem Flourish root tabs for my crypts and Echinodorus, and a low dose of liquid Seachem Flourish for the other plants. Most of them are 'easy' slow growing plants which is why I don't use the dose on the bottle, but about 1/3 of that.

 

[Colin_T]

I used Sera Florena and it made a huge difference to plant growth. You can put as much light on the tanks as you want but without the plant nutrients with the light, the plants don't grow well. After a few months with regular doses of aquarium plant fertiliser, the plants in the tanks were showing noticeable growth every week. The leaves were bigger and darker green. They were producing runners and branches and I was taking cuttings and planting them in other tanks.

Before I used aquarium plant fertiliser, the plants would slowly waste away and I was replacing them every few months.

 

[raylove]

Same experience as Colin.
I use TNC Lite as it's good value and lacks nitrate. My tap water is already around 30ppm. The trouble is it's lite on the other nutrients too, compared to the standard formula, so I add the full weekly dose every 3 days. Most of my plants are fast growing so they need the extra and if I just add the standard dose I get algae as then there is too much light compared to the level of nutrients.

 

[gwand]

I have anubias, Java fern, and Amazon sword growing green and healthy for 14 months without fertilizer.