I believe strongly that a healthy aquarium with healthy fish requires healthy plants. Below are my tips on how I try to see to it that my freshwater aquarium plants grow as well as possible. I’d like to share these tips with anyone who is interested in them and of course get some feedback on what you think. I hope with the things below also your plants will grow well!
Even if I speak of some specific products in this article, I am sure there are many equally good or even better ones. It just very hard to compare the products on your own, so I am more than happy to receive feedback on some products that you have used and that you think work better than the ones here.
Core fertilizers
I am sure there are many brands of plant fertilizer to use with your aquarium. For me, all the way from the beginning, EasyLife Easycarbo and EasyLife ProFito have been in the core of good plant growth. Both of these fertilizers are in liquid form. I add 2-3ml of EasyLife EasyACarbo (almost) daily for added carbon. I also add 15ml of EasyLife ProFito, which is a is a high-concentrate general plant fertilizer, weekly.
Regarding plant growth, if don’t plan on investing in anything else, these two products are the bare minimum you need to have.
Add some extra CO2
You plants require not only sun light and fertilizer, but also CO2 to grow. If you have enough fish in your tank, your fish might produce enough CO2 for your plants to grow well. But I would anyway use some extra CO2 just in case and you might use a smaller dosage than what is said on the CO2 dispenser.
I use the Jungle CO2 Fizz Factory because it’s small, cheap and easy to install in your tank. It might not be the prettiest, but for 20$ or so it is all you need. You’ll also need some CO2 fizz tablets and nowadays I use Sera’s CO2 tabs and they work just as well as any other in the dispenser. I put about one fizz tablet every other day and this seems to keep my plants happy.
Vitamins
Just as your fish, also your plants need vitamins. I add Dennerle S7 VitamMix weekly for my plants. This increases durability of the plants and your fish will also benefit from it by making the fist stronger against illness and reducing stress.
Gravel fertilizers
Some, for me mainly the Amazon sword plant, take the nutritives from the gravel. For this I have used two Dennerle products to secure the fertilizing from the gravel. First there is Dennerle Deponit NutriBalls which is sort of the basis for gravel fertilizing. You put the ball shaped fertilizer to the gravel near the plants and they will fertilize the plants for up to 12 months. One box contains 30 balls which will take you a long way. I’ve heard that they work partly by sucking nutritives from the water and slowly giving that to the plants.
I have also added Dennerle Cryptocoryne Root Fertilizer Tabs which are fertilizer tablets designed specifically for the Amazon sword plant. I have added these near the Sword plants every 3-4 months. Combined with the Depnit NutriBalls it seems the Sword plants are growing really well as you can see from the pictures taken on June 2011 – there are some Sword plants sprouts growing, and these are my sixth if I am not mistaken.
Disclaimer: These tips are based on many years of experience I have with my aquarium, I do not work for any aquarium shop, importer or manufacturer and I am not payed by Dennerle or anyone else to write about this stuff. All the opinions are my own.
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