Zooms Article 4- Fertilizers, Substrates and CO2

Thanks @Zoom this article a good read!!

 

Good read. I have just one question. My local nursery sells peat moss packets.It's a packet of compacted peat which u leave in water and then It falls apart.Can I use this and mix it with Pool filter sand as 75% of my substrate and just cover it with normal pool filter sand?

 

Thanks Zoom, you have explained it in a very clear precise manner - Im looking at planted tanks now after giving up for a while and using fake plants. The information you have provided is brilliant, many thanks for taking the time

 

Hi Guys,

I just thought that I should show you some pics of the results that I have got using PFP and nails to cultivate crypts in. They really like to grow in the PFP and Chemicult base WITH nails. What I did was to set up a tank with a 2 cm layer of PFP + Chemicult +nails as shown in the first pic taken on 22-04-2009 and capped this with a 1-2 cm layer of fine swiming pool filter sand.

Then I planted some crypts in this medium and I redid this tank on 27-09-2011, in other words almost two and a half years later. The crypts were growing famously, I was fertilizing with DSD into the water column, no CO2, no fancy or powerful lights. The nails were coated with a layer of rust, but the roots of the crypts were growing into the rust and the plants were quite firmly attached to them, when I took them out they came out with the nails and I took these pics showing just this (will show these in my next post). Although the plants are obviously also getting iron from the water column, why would they bother to grow their roots into the rust around the nails if they were not benefiting from them, in other words getting iron from them. I started with using the nails after observing as a school boy that the crypts in my tanks that grew around the sides of the tank grew a lot better and were much darker green than in the middle of the tank, this was before the days of aquatic plant fertilizers. In those days tanks were still made with iron frames and I then discovered that they had rusted and that the rust had dropped into the tank and had got covered with gravel and then the crypts got their roots into the rust. The addition of nails is so cheap and so simple that I see no reason why a tank should be without nails.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

I had to adjust the size of the images of the crypts so here we have them now.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Nice growth there Prof!
You DSD has done wonders for my tank. It's been going for 18months without a rescape. NEED TO RESCAPE!
How may I ask did you pull your tank apart with PFP?

 

Hi Mitch,

Glad to hear that the DSD is working for you. When I pull apart my PFPed tank, I use a thick hose and just simply syphon out gravel and PFP together. I then wash away the PFP in a bucket on my lawn with the garden hose and can then reuse the gravel, but I use new PFP + Chemicult.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Oh OK, Will try that then. Thanks
Mitch is the one breeding Killis, I'm Mike...

 

Hi Mike,

My apologies for getting you mixed up, I just battle to keep up with all these pseudonyms.....

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

I just wanted to show you another plant which is doing very well in PFP. This is Barclaya longifolia which is not an easy plant to grow. Barclayas are closely related to crypts, but they have a bulb and are quite fragile. This plant is growing without CO2 or fancy lighting but with my DSD. In the tank you can also see Echinodorus tenellus, and floating Hygrophila polysperma and stargrass and well as around 100 Endler guppies if you look carefully. I feed the guppies quite heavily as a result of which the nitrate they produce must feed the plants as well, but everything is growing fantastically.

Enjoy,

Dirk

 

@Dirk Bellstedt, I am amazed, professor, you dont perhaps have any Barclaya for sale?

Ive always been a convert of nails in the substrate, especially for my Nymphaea's, but due to the heavy critique on the net of this technique, Ive always kept my input to the minimum.

Kind regards

 

Hi Mzungu,

My barclaya's bulb is apparently getting bigger and bigger, and I see some sort of side plantlets, but it does not multiply like a crypt with runners, and as far as I know the primary way of reproducing is by means of seeds, so the reproduction of this plant does not seem to be so easy and I cannot supply plants.

It is the skeptics that do not want to use the nails technique. They don't really know why they don't want to try it, but they have just heard rumours about it being bad. The term that is used in agricultural economics for this sort of phenomenon is "resistance to change". People who are stuck on a rut and cannot accept new ideas and do not understand what nails can do. I DO understand the chemistry of what is going on here and that is why I use and recommend this, but man is it difficult to get some of these thickskinned people to change their ideas. However, we are both agreed on the results so let us at least assist our plants in this way and be happy with the growth that we are achieving.... the saying goes "You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink!!!!!".

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

@Zoom, Thanks for taking the time to write this. It really makes it easier for beginners when the information is grouped together like this, and easy to understand. Also, the rest of the discussions usually contain some gold and are almost always worth the read.