How to Properly Use Aquarium Fertilizer to Beat Algae For Good!
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- Опубликовано: 19 окт 2024
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One of the biggest headaches for planted tanks is having an algae infestation, so our goal is to balance the lighting and nutrient levels in the aquarium so the plants are happy and grow faster than algae. In part 2 of our "Algae Control for Beginners" series, let's focus on how to control algae by having the proper nutrients or food for your plants.
MATERIALS
▶️ Easy Green all-in-one liquid fertilizer: www.aquariumco...
▶️ Easy Root Tabs for fertilizing the substrate: www.aquariumco...
▶️ Multi-test strips for measuring nitrate: www.aquariumco...
RESOURCES
▶️ Plant nutrient deficiency chart: www.aquariumco...
▶️ Plant nutrient deficiency article: www.aquariumco...
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WHO WE ARE
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At Aquarium Co-Op, we focus on your aquariums. We specialize in freshwater tropical fish, aquatic plants, and the overall betterment of the freshwater fish keeping hobby. Our goal is to help you with your first pet fish and graduate you to an advanced aquarium hobbyist. If you'd like to take it to the next level, subscribe to Aquarium Co-Op and check out our weekly videos.
Cory McElroy is employed by Aquarium Co-Op LLC. He also owns Aquarium Co-Op LLC. Therefore, all content is sponsored by Aquarium Co-Op.
#Aquariumcoop #Aquariumfish #Fishtank
*What advice do you have for beginners on how to balance the nutrients in their planted aquarium?*
don't overfeed your fish!
Know your incoming water! Tap or well. You GH and KH are important components. Tap can even have nitrates.
Try different plants, look how their leaves look over time... Tests give you hints, but they don't tell the full story and every aquarium has it's story.
Patience: It takes 2-3 weeks for deficiency to appear, so wait 2-3 weeks before changing dosing. Algae like overdosing.
A plant growing easily in one tank may not grow in another tank whatever you try. It could be Staugyrone Repens, it could be Hygrophilla Pinnatifida.
Don't be afraid to experiment a bit: Try different substrates, a re-mineralised osmotic water, an open tank with plants growing emersed, setup a no-tech nano with anubis on a windowsill, etc.
Small changes over time.
Don’t make a bunch of changes all at once. You won’t know what worked or what wrecked your aquarium. Make small changes over a lengthy period of time.
Don't use nutrients
I've gone to diluting my Easy Green in a spray bottle and spray some in the tank everyday at the beginning of the day when photosynthesis is starting up for your lighting period. Seems to work well as the plants get nutrients each day albeit in small doses. Thanks for all your videos Irene...you rock!!
This whole playlist is fantastic! Great information presented in a very clear, accessible, and engaging way. Irene's videos are my favorite!
Light-wise, I have a Fluval 3.0 and was overwhelmed with it for the longest time. Bentley Pascoe has an AMAZING series on it where I learned that when starting a new planted tank, dial back the lighting to 50% of where you want to be for the first few weeks. If everyone seems happy and there isn't an abundance of algae, dial it up 25% and let it go for another 2 weeks. If that is still going well, take it up to where you want to be. He recommends no higher than 5% blue for 20 highs/40 breeders/etc and no more than 2-3% for 10s and 20 Longs. One of the most helpful things I have learned!
And also about nature - not all species live everywhere. If there is a lack of something, only most tolerant/best competing species will survive.
One of the best videos I've seen on the subject. One note about EI is that it's not about needing a lot of plants to uptake all the nutrients, the point is to provide more nutrients than they *can* uptake. Rather, healthy growing plants produce a number of enzymes and other substances that wage invisible biological warfare against algae, so you need the plants to be healthy and growing throughout the light period to be successful when algae also has access to such luxurious resources. The key with EI is that you take nutrients out of the "balancing" equation. If you inject CO² to a one-point pH drop, that is also removed from the equation. Then the only factor that you have to worry about is light, and light is really the driver of algae. You can grow as fast or slow as you want by manipulating the light duration and intensity.
Now I just wish Aquarium Co-Op would ditch the "phosphates cause algae" myth and put a decent amount of phosphate into Easy Green so people would stop getting so much GSA with it. It would also be nice if there was a low N&P option for heavily stocked tanks. Until then, I can never recommend it, Colin (NilocG) has the best line in the hobby rn, with Dennis (2 Hr Aquarist) close behind
I have the majority of my 50+ tanks pretty well balanced with the help of those Aquarium Co-op test strips... I was dosing blindly before, since the test strips, my algea is going away or has already gone... I'm always well stocked on my Easy Green, root tabs & test strips now a days...! Another great informative video...! Keep it up and go enjoy nature today...!!!
Woot! Woot! More wisdom from Irene!! I really appreciate her direct communication style, and warm tone of voice. Give this Lady a raise and us more of her content, please!!
Love it! The best aqua channel on yt. Informative and easy to understand. I have a crush!!!! 🤦🏾♂️
Looking forward to getting some easy green this Christmas. Thank you for sharing this fantastic knowledge!
This is an absolutely outstanding video packed full of succint, useful information. Hats off to Irene!
kudos for bringing up and explaining Liebigs law of the minimum. Absolutely the key to grasp plant nutrition imo, keep it up! Science-driven, easy to understand content❤
Fantastic video! I have zero affiliation, but wanted to share that the Aquatic Log app is a godsend for recording almost anything you can think of related to your aquariums. I tried pen and paper for a couple months and calendar reminders years ago, nothing beats having it in your pocket computer aka phone nowadays. I highly recommend an app for people with multiple tanks to maintain. I really need to work on plant care more, thanks for the reminder.
Extremely easy to follow but yet very informative video on how to balance ferts in your aquarium. Thank you!
I'm definitely going to be going with Cory's products when I kick off my first planted tank here in the next month or so. Still in the process of gathering everything as spare cashola allows. Which can be difficult around Christmas time for me since i've got a bunch of people to buy for, lol. Livestock meds should be arriving today along with the last bit of substrate, picked up some hard scape yesterday, so after that just need to get my Easy-Green and my Easy Root Tabs and test kits ordered from your store. And THEN i'll be ready to stand it all up and go grab my flora and fauna.
-Shane
Great information! It's a much prettier way to control algae than to spend every week scraping it off the glass.
Great video, Irene!
Another nicely done video :)
I just added 5 plants to my already establised tank that had 4 fish in it. Is waiting a week long enough to let everything stablize with the new plants before adding a few more fish. Spacificly 3 more zebra danios to go with the small one i already have.
I keep a good stock of it on hand & don't have but
2 tanks & since I've been using easy green fertilizer
pump spray, it's really perked my plants up, 💓
I do have goldfish in another tank & use their waste
IN BETWEEN using easy green, so that's how I got the
plant's I have going, starting with goldfish waste water
& pumping easy green the past year & I can't complain.
On the co op website, The instructions for easy green suggest keeping nitrate at 20-50ppm nitrate, but for a tank like mine with chronically low nitrate it takes 5x the recommended dosage to even achieve a 5-10ppm change on the api liquid test.
I moved to a DIY dry mix fertilizer system and found it much easier to measure the desired changes nitrate levels
I keep my tank between 25 and 50 ppm and i saw a much improved plant growth. If you test your water and its 25 to 50 ppm do you still dose the fertilizer?
Fluval and other things like that are either capped with super fine grain sand or you'l have more than just phosphates in the water column. Plants need to feed with their roots. Only from the column to a lowe-ish degree.
I think adding fertiliser always introduces more algi, I would ONLY add ferts when there’s no algi left.
Very good information thank you.
My Co-Op test strips say the tank water is way harder (maxed out) than my tap water. I'm trying to figure out what that means for my plants' fertilizer needs -- and also if I need to figure out what's causing that and stop it. Algae wise, this video is right where I'm at, I brought my lighting under control and it made a huge difference , ready to work on nutrients now.
Have you been topping off evaporated water and not doing water changes? What sorts of rocks do you have in your tank?
@@katherinep1010 Mostly yes topping off. I tried a 10% change and it didn't even move the needle. Apart from aquarium gravel, several large rocks for decoration, composition unknown. I could remove one at a time after a few bigger water changes. Or maybe put each one in a bucket of water overnight and test that?
There are also a lot of snail shells and some wood and coconut hut that is decaying.
@@qcsupport2594 I don't think high GH or KH has a negative impact on plants. I wouldn't worry about it from that point of view. If anything, KH is beneficial to some plants since they use it as a source of CO2. Unless your tank has been seeing mostly top-off for a long time it is likely something in the tank that is increasing those values that dramatically. They even make aquarium substrate that does this (for African Cichlid tanks, etc.).
@@qcsupport2594 I thought I needed to address my high GH & KH in my tanks back in 2021.... even though plants, livestock and minimal amounts of algae said the tank was happy.
It has taken me 2 years to get things back in balance visually & behaviorally, after "fixing my tank" based on test strips.
My advice is if your plants and livestock are happy and healthy, don't fix what isn't broke.
Your tank is unique to your water, plants, animals and environment.
The test strips are good for monitoring and noticing a dramatic change. High GH & KH are normal in the tank, due to everything that is dissolved in the tank... like fish & plant food, dust from the substrate, etc
What potassium test kit do you use?
Great video, well explained like always.
What a lovely tank
How soon after you use fert do you test your nitrate?
TIA
I've been asking everywhere and I can't get an answer? How often can you use algaecide? Once a week? Once a month?
The green outlet of the sponge filter in the background in the centre of the frame looks like a "1"
great video!
A frustrating friction point for users and something that I'm sure loses you views (whichever way you cares about it): when you start of a video with "welcome to part two" you should REALLY link part one or a playlist in the description.
How do I know if I have a low light or medium light tank?
Great vid!
My well water is acidic and virtually zero hardness. I have a tank in my bathroom with plants, snails and shrimp that has never seen a fertilizer. I do, however, have potting soil under my sand. You don't always need liquid fertilizer to grow plants.
Does sachem phosguard kill water sprite?
The easy green fertilizer pump is horrible. Alot of times the pump doesn't work
It's not the pump it's the mineral build up in the pump. Take it off and run just the pump head in some warm/hot water to wash out the mineral buildup.
@@kpov2533 Thanks
How do you deal with high levels of Phosphates? Does high phosphates have an impact on plant growth?
will easy green melt jungle valve?
Irene is awesome.
great video
Anyone know the name of the taller stem plants @ 4:20 ? Thanks
Is 20 to 50 ppm nitrate safe for the fish? I’ve always thought low to no nitrate best for fish? I want healthy plants but healthy fish of more importance.
I have some aquariums " all planted" with zero nitrates and some with 20ppm. I don't do any water changes, and that's the levels they stay and my fish are super healthy and even breed. If you want plants to grow, get the zero nitrates out of your head. Zero nitrates are all everyone used to talk about that's in the past,well for planted tanks anyway. Here is an example go to your local lake or stream and test the water. You'll find that they have a level of nitrates close to what is talked about in the videos. I'm not being a smart mouth, but fish live in water with a particular level of nitrates, and they do just fine there, so why wouldn't that be true for your aquarium. I used to hover over my aquariums, and any sign of nitrates would send me into water change mode. Now, all I do is add water and dose fertilizer. No water changes in years, I will say my substrate in all my aquariums is 4" deep, and that's key to the no water change method. Go watch MD fish tanks, his tanks will amaze you. He uses the no water change method of no filter set up as he calls it.
20 definitely is ok people normally say up to 30-40 but higher is ok for short periods of time I just wouldn’t add new fish when they were higher than 40
What qualifies as a low-light vs a medium vs a high light tank?
I have wondered the same thing, I would say growing Tiger Lotuses and other Red Plants is considered medium to high light.
Anything below 20 lumens/liter would be a low-light tank. 20-30 lumens/liter medium, anything above would be a high-light tank. This is a rough estimate as lumens is not the most accurate unit for this, but it's good enough.
You have to look up how much lumens your light produces.
Same thing for the liter/gallon conversion. Silly americans =)
When my plants die, I go and buy new ones, so I try to buy plant that last longer without much care. Its a lot simpler to do.
I've been into aquariums every since the '60s guys have fun a lot of the new information on RUclips makes it seem like you have to take a college course to have a fish aquarium there so technical, enjoy the hobby it's not that complicated and RUclipsrs. I'll put it this way if I was coming into the hobby they would scared me away with all the fancy talking all this crazy technology ,don't get me wrong I keep up with the time but stick with the basics enjoy the hobby and with time and experience you'll enjoy the hobby 👍
Spot on.
Could members get early access to new videos?
What’s the fish and plant featured at 00:55? :)
Hi why would i have algae in a tank that has no live plant and the light is on for no more the. 8 hours a day.
It’s strange how this video came to me at the right time hahH
Cheeky-"If you really cant tell by the holes, you know which one it is"
I have horrible issues with black/hair algae it’s ruining my tank and plants 😢😢😢
I need to grow algae for my bottom dwellers
👍🏻👍🏻
Got the food pyramid wrong and it's outdated
When will you talk about algae being beat? Didn't hear the word algae.
Balancing fertalizer, co2, and light is the exact way to beat algae
A bit too much of an actual ad, not a proper valuable dosing tutorial
great info here 🐟🪴
So all my life I thought I had to remove the plant from the pot (well, from the rockwool at least) 🥲
great video