Water Colum Fertz

Hi guys I want to start using fertz in my tanks BUT I dont want to be adding nutrients I may already have too much of so what should I get the LPS to test my water for before I start looking at which products to get? SO far I think I should at least test phosphates and nitrates since I do have a cyano problem any other suggestions

 

Bump. Anyone? @Zoom @azurekoi? Any other plant fundis?

 

You're not giving many details on your setup.
You have a inert substrate?
You need the following to grow plants,

Macronutrients:

Phosphates - from the fish food,how much we don't know as yet.
Nitrates - from the nitrogen cycle,how much we don't know as yet.
Calcium - depends on your tap water.
Magnesium - depends on your tap water.
Potassium - from ferts.
Sulphur - from tap water or ferts.

Micronutrients:

Boron - ferts
Iron - ferts or nails in the substrate
Chloride - Depends on your tap water
Nickel - ferts
Copper - ferts
Manganese - ferts
Molybdenum - ferts
Zinc - ferts

Conclusion.... get yourself a KH/GH test kit to test your water hardness.
Assume you have no micronutrients in your tank and your plants need them.
Get a good micronutrient fertilizer,Seachem,Sera,Tetra,.....ect.

If you can add more info on your setup,it could help.

 

Thanks Rudi I have pfp with silica sand cap. Sorry for not adding that in at the beginning. All the test kits are a bit bewildering and Im not sure what is essential and what I would only require if a specific problem came up. Since posting this I have pmed the prof I think I will probably use his ferts

 

I swear by the professors fertz.

 

@FishRMan,
To do this right the first time,you should try and "un-bewilder" yourself and do just a little bit of research.
You can't test for every nutrient with our hobby-grade test kits.The important ones are GH,KH and Ph.Nitrate test kits are unreliable/inaccurate.Phosphate?I've never tested for it.

If you have PFP with chemicult,why do you think you need water colum fertz?Isn't the substrate supposed to provide all the nutrients you need?

 

@Rudi I am doing my best to unbewilder myself and its only thanks to people like yourself that noobs like myself learn. My reason for adding fertz is that when I compare the growth of my plants to the growth of many other peoples tanks even with an inert substrate the growth is seriously lacking. In 5 months I have had to trim my plants once. Very few new shoots have developed. Cyano has also developed to a small extent however I have managed to control this to some extent. From my understanding my lighting is adequate although I am in the process of upgrading the globes when I find a supplier. I can therefore only assume that my tank is lacking in available nutrients. Whether this is due to a mistake when I layed out the pfp or whether I have placed predominately plants which take up nutrients through the water column I can't say. Plants btw include amazon swords and a few others I can't remember the names of all stem plants tho