Reddit reviews Seachem Flourish Freshwater Plant Supplement - Aquarium Element and Nutrient Blend 500 ml

Since you are trying to learn as much as you can, here are my simple guidelines!

Supplies

-filter
-heater (3-5 Watts per gallon)
-tank 2.5 + ( bigger the better )

• 3 living plants or more
  
  Upkeep
  
  -water change 25% small tank& 10% for larger every other week
  -plant fertilizer ( liquid and/or tabs )
  -quality pellets ( I recommend this )

Make sure you're dosing CO2 and nutrients (Flourish contains copper, if you have crustaceans then try this one ).

You can also use a CO2 gas diffuser rather than a carbon-containing liquid. Those setups are more expensive; I don't use one so maybe someone who does could explain how they work, but I hear they're very effective for larger tanks. My tanks are 5.5 G and 20 G and the liquid works fine for me.

You could also try adding inverts that eat decaying plant matter, such as snails and shrimp, if they're compatible with your setup. Also check your water parameters and make sure nothing crazy is going on, though since I assume your fish are fine then that would be my last guess.

Things you'll need:

Filter

Heater

You'll need this for the filter

Substrate

lamp i bought mine at a supercenter for 7.99; this link is to let you know what it looks like

light

I personally use everything on this list; they're cheap and reliable. To maintain the sponge filter all you have to do is rinse it in a bucket filled with tank water, after a water change for example, every 2 weeks.

Go to r/plantedtank for info on plants, but i will give you some quick tips

1. Plants are living organisms; they need nutrients just as we humans need nutrients. They definitely get malnurish and it shows. To prevent malnourishment aka nutrient deficiency you need to dose nutrients. I reccomend seachem flousrish, seachem excel, and seachem potassium. If you only want like 1 or 2 plants then you might be able to get away with only dosing flourish, but if you want a good amount of plants you will eventually need every nutrient including nitrogen(depending on how many fish you have), iron, and phosphorus. If you don't dose nutrients your plants may die and you may also get an algae farm; once algae gets established it can be hard to remove so it's better to prevent it. You could also dose co2, but that's later on; you'll need experience with plants first.
   
   
2. In the planted tank community fish tanks are distinguished by low tech setups and high tech setups. I'm not gonna explain the difference, look it up yourself, but you will start out with a low tech setup. Since you'll have a low tech setup look up low tech plants on google or whatever search engine you use. The most common are moss, wisteria, anubias and so on.
   
   This is everything i can think of on the fly, but do a lot of research on your own. Having a planted tank isn't as easy as just plopping in some plants and watch as they flourish.

They're probably going to give you some sort of nutrient for the plants, which you may or may not want at first. Initially, consider the substrate you will be using in the tank. If you plan on having plants, gravel is not recommended. It's possible, but you'll see much better growth with something meant for plants. There's a lot of substrates out there designed for just that. Talk to your LFS about it, I'm sure they can give you some suggestions.

As for fertilizer, you may want to wait and see how things do with the proper substrate alone. Your fish and other fauna will provide macro nutrients for the plants (Nitrogen, Phospohorus, and Potassium), which may be enough for you at first. Do some research on your plants and pick ones that are easy maintenance and have low light requirements. Check out the forum I mention below for some help. They have a section just on plants that will give you some good ideas. Also browse around the low-tech setup sections and see what other people use!

If and when you are ready for the next step, there is stuff called Seachem Flourish (http://amzn.to/1cT6LeT) that provides a lot of the micro nutrients your plants will need. I use it in my tanks and it works great. As I said before, your fauna provide macro nutrients, and the Flourish adds the rest.

If you want to get a little more complicated, there is a product called Seachem Flourish Excel (http://amzn.to/13FM5yD) that provides carbon for your plants in a liquid form. Be careful with this stuff as it is toxic in large concentrations. Just follow the directions and you'll be fine. This stuff works great in combination with the Flourish mentioned previously.

The LFS may try and sell you on both of those products (or their other-brand equivalents) initially. As I said, start with a good substrate as that is something that is difficult (although not impossible) to change once the tank is established. Once you get things up and running (you know about the nitrogen cycle, right??), then start adding complexity. I didn't do that when I got into the hobby and was quickly in over my head and my budget.

If you want to read further, I suggest you check out this forum: http://www.plantedtank.net/ Either the low-tech or planted nano tank sub-forums will be of interest!

The conditioner is good for treating tap water. I have never used the stress zyme, but it seems alright for establishing some good bacteria. For fertilizers you can just buy some seachem flourish :https://www.amazon.com/Seachem-116051309-Flourish-500ml/dp/B00025696M/ref=sr_1_7?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1504143906&sr=1-7&keywords=seachem and excel https://www.amazon.com/Seachem-67104530-Flourish-Excel-500ml/dp/B000256962/ref=pd_bxgy_199_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3PGHZXBQPXTZWQEWQY7G . Also be prepared to buy some root tabs if you are getting heavy root feeding plants like amazon swords and jungle val, they will appreciate the extra nutrients https://www.amazon.com/Seachem-Flourish-Tabs-40-Count/dp/B001NTE30A/ref=pd_sim_199_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3PGHZXBQPXTZWQEWQY7G . Another option for fertilizers is to make your own with dry fertilizers. This method is much cheaper than buying the expensive commercial ones, so you can look that up and try it out if you want.

For the water testing kit, it is purely optional IMO but highly recommended. They are useful during cycling to check water parameters so you can confirm your tank is indeed 100% cycled. They are also useful for weekly/monthly tank check ups to see if anything is fouling your water (which can potentially kill your plants and fish!). You can either buy the testing strips or the liquid test kit. Both are pretty expensive, but you'll get the most bang for your buck with the liquid test kit- https://www.amazon.com/API-FRESHWATER-800-Test-Freshwater-Aquarium/dp/B000255NCI/ref=sr_1_4?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1504144626&sr=1-4&keywords=test+kit

Both hygrophila and anarchis are stem plants, and as such would benefit from fertilizers to grow properly. Due to the nature of a stem plant, you can simply use liquid fertilizer as opposed to dry (like root tabs). The best in my opinion is Seachem Flourish. The bottle is $10-15 depending on where you buy it, and will last you almost literally forever in a 5 gallon tank. I think your dose would be about .5ml, which you'd do about once a week. There's 500 ml in a bottle, so it's not expensive at all. Side note: I highly recommend something like this to dose fertilizers with. It's easy to do too much/little when using just the cap.

Another thing stem plants really love is carbon. This is optional, really, but if you experience issues like yellowing leaves or the plant growing too slowly for your taste (both anarchis and hygro should grow like weeds, normally), liquid carbon will help. For that I use Seachem Flourish Excel in tanks where I don't have injected CO2. I generally overdose my tank on purpose when I want my plants to grow like wild fire (generally when I want to sell stems or propagate other parts of the tank). Note that Excel is harmful to invertebrates, so if you happen to add shrimp or snails in the future, use with caution.

Stems are great because when you trim them, you can replant the trimmings and make your aquatic garden as dense or as sparse as you want it to be quite easily. I always recommend stem plants or swords for beginners, since they're easy and pretty.

Both hygro and anarchis will grow just fine in low light with a little fertilizer. They will grow like kudzu on a barn with high light and lots of ferts and CO2, so they're versatile in terms of the environment you keep them in.

Also, my Betta loves his hygro. It's what he sleeps in. :)

You could put low light plants

You can take plants out for a couple hours, just put them in a moist bag. I usually buy a large ziplock bag and fill it with a bit of water. They'll last a few days, just make sure they dont dry out.

Honestly I'd just skip the plants and add some decorations for them to hide in or the fake plants. The PAR (photosynthetic active radiation) on that light is so low that your plants will look unhealthy. The hood is just designed to light the tank.

This would work with low light and a micro fert bottle would last you 2-3 years on a 10 gal. Then you could have healthy low light plants that look good.

I'd also throw in a few ghost shrimp (like 4) just to keep things clean. Or 1 Otocinculus,They'll clean your substrate from fish poop and algae. It'll cut your maintenance down a lot which is helpful in dorms lol

> Flourish comprehensive is a fertilizer

Exactly this.

/u/battletatics - I thought you were talking about this product: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00025696M

Here are some things that may or may not help you grow Wysteria:

• I feed Seachem Flourish liquid ferts once per week (after the weekly water change).
  
  
• I use Seachem Prime to condition new water.
  
  
• I use Fluval Aqualife & Plant LEDs to light my tank. I have them on a 7 hours/day light timer.
  
  Other than that, I don't do anything particularly special. I don't aerate or CO^2 inject. I used Excel once for algae, and it totally melted most of my plants, so I don't recommend it to anyone.
  
  I should note that my tank is a 29 gal.

EI is a method of fertilizing known as the Estimative Index. It is by-far the most accepted method for properly dosing Macro and Micro nutrients as you measure them out individually in powder form and just add them to your tank. It allows for much more control over your conditions for fine tuning.

Decent guide here http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/fertilizing/15225-estimative-index-dosing-guide.html

Honestly though, from personal experience as someone who has just recently dove into fish and planted tank care, I would suggest just getting something like Seachem Excel : https://www.amazon.com/Seachem-116051309-Flourish-500ml/dp/B00025696M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487018492&sr=8-1&keywords=seachem+flourish
(I only suggest this because EI just adds another level to the learning curve.

And then step into the world of EI once you feel more comfortable.

Nice work. Anubias is perfect - I keep it in my betta tank and he loves it. A few suggestions, though, to make it easier. Take some of the filter material from your current tank and put it in the new filter. If you do that, you have an instant cycle. One suggestion with the live plants is to pick up "Root Tabs." They will provide nutrients to the plants to promote strong root growth. I'd also suggest a liquid fertilizer like Seachem Flourish if you want optimal growth (nice looking plants!).

Also, driftwood is absolutely great. You will have "tannins" leaching into the water from the wood for awhile (essentially brown proteins without getting too much into the biology of it). They aren't harmful to the fish, but can make the water a dark, almost tea color. To deal with this, just change the carbon in your filter more frequently and do more frequent water changes.

Thanks for the advice. Actually, the tank has been up for 6 months now so it's well cycled. It just need some nitrogen intake, which is quite low since we don't really put any food in. Would this be the flourish fertilizer in question?

I've read that cutting back to 8 hours is great for hurting algae growth.
http://www.amazon.com/Seachem-116051309-Flourish-500ml/dp/B00025696M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404761803&sr=8-1&keywords=seachem+flourish

I've also read dosing that will just kill off most algae within a week or two.

Look into buying some Seachem fluorish, it's got just about everything you need to fertilize your tank, except for the potassium. I would start with that to see if that fixes the issue. If new leaves start coming in damaged, or old leaves continue to brown, Seachem also makes a potassium supplement that you can dose in addition to the fluorish. I'd also recommend adding some source of bioavailable carbon to your tank, fluorish excel would be good for your needs. As long as you follow the dosing directions your fish will be fine.

You also say that your sister does changes every two weeks then cleans the glass by wiping the algae away. What percentage of the water would you say she changes? Also, got any pictures of the tank?

What good is a tank without a regulator and accessories? If someone is making the jump, I've got everything they'll need.

Bubble counter/check valve is $8 new.

Fluval bubble counter is only a couple bucks.

Fluval diffuser is
only $5.

Drop checker (which i forgot to mention) is $14 new.

CO2 proof tubing is $10 new, but granted what I've got left is a little cut up.

And each bottle of Flourish is $10 new, and mine are all nearly full.

To get all of it brand new would be ~$300 and you'd have to run all over the place to track it down. If you wanna make an offer, I'll accept anything reasonable.