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Root or leaf fed?

Started by Guest_lozgod_* , Mar 05 2010 10:09 PM

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14 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_lozgod_*

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Posted 05 March 2010 - 10:09 PM

I have the following plants in my tank and am trying to figure out what routes of fertilization I need to take.

The following I know are not root feeders:
Hornwort
Java Fern
Java Moss Duckweed
Frogbit

The one I know is definitely a root feeder is:
Various Vallensaria (sp.)

Now this is where I am confused because these plants will grow planted or floating:
Elodea
Ludwiga Repens

For the last two will liquid ferts suffice or do I have to fertilize them via the substrate?

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#2 Guest_BTDarters_*

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Posted 06 March 2010 - 04:57 AM

I would use substrate fertilization for the last two, in addition to water column fertilization. I have Ludwigia repens in a few of my tanks, and it's doing very well with substrate fertilization and water column fertilization via Flourish Excel. CO₂ could be used in place of the Excel if you wanted. For the substrate, I use 50% Seachem Flourite and 50% filter rock (fine-grained gravel) mixed very well. I do add a little bit of different-sized inert gravel on top, but that's just for aesthetics. I think that you'll find that most of your plants will do best if fertilized in the substrate and water column.

Brian

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#3 Guest_schambers_*

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Posted 06 March 2010 - 10:46 AM

I assume that the plant gets most of its nutrients from the roots. Other than photosynthesis, obviously. If the plant has roots in the substrate and up the stem in the water, it feeds from both.

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#4 Guest_nativeplanter_*

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Posted 06 March 2010 - 11:10 AM

Ludwigia is probably a root feeder, but I'm not sure about Elodea. Elodea doesn't produce many roots, so the leaves may be more important.

I don't remember what your set up is and what your substrate is like. What I would do in your situation is keep doing what I am doing, and if the Ludwigia starts to decline, then stick a tiny piece of a miracle grow stick in ths substrate under it. Other than that, why fix it if it ain't broke?

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#5 Guest_lozgod_*

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Posted 06 March 2010 - 11:41 AM

Ludwigia is probably a root feeder, but I'm not sure about Elodea. Elodea doesn't produce many roots, so the leaves may be more important.

I don't remember what your set up is and what your substrate is like. What I would do in your situation is keep doing what I am doing, and if the Ludwigia starts to decline, then stick a tiny piece of a miracle grow stick in ths substrate under it. Other than that, why fix it if it ain't broke?

I am using eco-complete at the moment. It is coming up on 3 months old so I am thinking it might be time to start supplementing with ferts (substrate ferts). Already using them in the water column. Soil was great but too messy from my experience. If I had a low current tank I would go with it again but it gets too stirred up in my tank.

Elodea roots but it seems to root out from the stem when new stems appear. The roots are under the new stems so I detach the new stems with the root attached and plant that and remove the older stems.

Miracle gro can be used? I was going to buy flourish tabs but Miracle Gro would be cheaper. Just concerned about certain elements may be in it that could be harmful to snails or inverts.

@ BT I would recommend anyone stay away from Fourish Excel. It is actually a disinfectant. Also I had mysterious deaths of ghost shrimp that ceased with my stopping the flourish excel. I use a different product for adding carbon to the water column. It is called FlorinAxis by Brightwell Aquatics. It uses citric acid and sodium citrate for it's carbon source.

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#6 Guest_nativeplanter_*

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Posted 06 March 2010 - 01:33 PM

I'm sure there are some differences between Miracle-Gro and Flourish Tabs, but I've never been interested in the extra expense (plus the extra trip to a separate store). I've had very good results using the Miracle Gro, and it didn't seem to hurt my snails. I only really used them for heavy feeders, though, like Echinodorus. And then it would be when they looked like they were sagging a little. This was also in soil tanks; I don't know if the larger pore space in the Eco-Complete would let a lot of it out into the water column. If it were my tank, I'd give it a shot, but only if the Ludwigia looks like it is not growing as well as it used to be. I'm always wary of putting fertilizers in a planted tank because algae can so quickly become a nuisance. Oh - I've seen generic brand plant sticks, which are even less expensive. They are often sold with the houseplant stuff in a little blister pack, hanging from a hook. I just break off a tiny piece of one, maybe 5mm in length. I'd use two or three little pieces for really large plants that were heavy feeders, and I'd stick each piece about 1 or 2 inches under the soil. My thought was that the soil might help keep the fertilizer out of the water column.

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#7 Guest_joshuapope2001_*

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Posted 17 March 2010 - 07:31 AM

In my experience "Miracle-Gro" is bad for fish. I cannot be 100% sure but I am fairly sure that is what caused a huge die off in one of my tanks.

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#8 Guest_mikez_*

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Posted 17 March 2010 - 08:45 AM

I like the either/or type of "bunch" plants, meaning they grow floating but will put down roots. Most of the invasives that fill our waters are that type and it's what makes them so adaptable.
Break off a frond and float it, it grows. Take a dead looking naked stem and anchor it horizontal in good substrate and each joint puts out roots and stems.
Unless you have good light, alot of stem plants go "leggy" when rooted in deeper H2O. Stuff like that looks better floating loose near the surface.

An interesting observation I made recently was when I dug up my crypt thicket to move and found all the grow sticks I'd put in 2 years ago almost intact at original size. They don't seem to break down and there was no discernable difference between the plants near the sticks and farther away. Pretty sure they were MG brand, not positive.

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#9 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 17 March 2010 - 11:49 AM

In my experience "Miracle-Gro" is bad for fish. I cannot be 100% sure but I am fairly sure that is what caused a huge die off in one of my tanks.

What type of Miracle-Gro did you use? Tabs, powder, other?

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#10 Guest_joshuapope2001_*

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Posted 18 March 2010 - 02:09 PM

I used the tabs. With in an an hour every fish in the tank was dead

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#11 Guest_Newt_*

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Posted 18 March 2010 - 02:12 PM

Wow. That is very unfortunate. I have used the tabs with no problems, though it was a small amount in a rather large tank.

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#12 Guest_nativeplanter_*

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Posted 18 March 2010 - 05:56 PM

I used the tabs. With in an an hour every fish in the tank was dead

Wait a sec..... the Miracle-Gro tabs as in "Miracle Gro Instant Action Houseplant Food Tablets", the effervescing things that you are supposed to dissolve in 2 quarts of water before use?

Yeah, I can see that using it might cause a problem...

That particular product is concentrated and intended to be dissolved, then used to water houseplants. It is very different from the fertilizer tabs that are meant for aquatic plants. The Miracle-Gro product that I have successfully used for aquatics (without killing fish) are the houseplant sticks. These are much, much less concentrated; a houseplant in a 3-4 inch pot needs 2 entire sticks. For aquaria, I use a tiny piece of one stick, jammed into the soil.

So, if you accidentally used the Miracle-Gro brand tab, you were adding a whole lot more fertilizer than you were intending to. I haven't done the math, but boy, it would be a whole lot more! Even if you stuck it into the soil, I imagine the fizzing would bring the fertilizer right out into the water column anyway.

As an interesting aside, I don't think they sell the effervescing tabs anymore. Not sure when they stopped, but I don't see them for sale. Maybe they looked too much like candy.

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#13 Guest_mikez_*

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Posted 19 March 2010 - 09:52 AM

Right, in my case I was referring to the sticks.
Mine were in for two years and didn't hurt fish but didn't dissolve much either. The sticks were stuck in at random into a thicket of crypts. I imagined a six inch diameter influence [WAG], so aimed for that spacing. I never liked the way those plants were thriving, thus the sticks, but they didn't help. My substrate lacked any real nutrients to keep up with so much vegetation but the sticks couldn't have contributed much. I was expecting better growth around the sticks.
Now I'm not blaming the sticks for failure to thrive. My substrate was barren glacial till, no nutrients and too many bigger stones and my aged shop light bulbs weren't penetrating well enough for the rooted plants. I am casting doubt on how effective they were in my case. I'm wondering if my gravel and or water chemistry prevented the nutrients from dissolving.

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#14 Guest_nativeplanter_*

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Posted 19 March 2010 - 10:27 AM

If your lights were inadequate, that was probably your primary problem. After that, I don't think the issue was the nutrients dissolving so much as the plants not being able to get them. I've noticed that pea gravel gives very poor growth. Makes sense, though, because a lot of the nutrients that plants get are those that are attached to clay or organic particles, and the root hairs pull them off (note - there isn't a thick coating - we're talking ionically attached here, at the molecular level). But what makes it work well is lots of surface area for the roots to touch the clay and take up the nutrients. With sand/gravel, the nutrients are less attacted to the surface, and there is less surface area. Sort of a double-whammy. There are ways to work around this and lots of people do by dosing with fertilizers etc. Too much work in my opinion. Having lots and lots of mulm works well if you have a smaller size gravel for it to mix in with, as cations adhere well to organics and again, there is lots of surface area.

Oh - BTW - I don't think the sticks themselves are supposed to dissolve. I think the nutrients leach out and leave the stick behind. It's been a while since I've done this though, so I don't have a plant to go check under. But I'm betting the sticks remain for a while.

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#15 Guest_v369_*

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Posted 04 December 2010 - 02:53 PM

seachem makes an entire line of aquatic fertalizers and micro noutrient supplements that are made for use in fish and invert tanks, i have found that fertalizers produced for terestrial and emergent plants do nothing but trigger algae bloom and are hard to dose corectly to give for optimal dilution and distrubition within the water column. especialy with slower growing species.