Fertilizers for 55 gallon planted tank

Hey all! Havent been here in a while
So here goes!

The tanks been up for around a year now, and just started putting plants in over the past 4 months. I was wondering what the best fertilizers out there are?

Also, i was wondering if i could use human vitamins like potassium, iron, and calcium ( i also have a FW mussel in the tank). Would that be ok? Or a terrible terrible idea?

Lights are 150W metal halide single
Bulb 6500K. Using denitrate by seachem. Around 60 lbs of rock. Sand and rocks as substrate. Not much flow throughout the tank but good surface agitation.

Thanks very much!,
Gexx

 

first of all I want to see a picture

as far as fertilizers go I think petsmart carries some liquid stuff that farily cheep I just got some and it was 3 bucks.

 

Im not sure gow to put photos on from my mobile device. And i think that may be seachem
Flourish. Is it working well for you?
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3

 

to be totaly honest I just started my FWPT as well and cant really say for sure but it was recomended to me by onother forum. and I think you right it is sea chem

 

Gexx! Long time no see! Seachem flourish is good stuff. Seachem Excel will also be beneficial to your tank. You arent using any fertilizers at the moment at all?

 

Ive been quite busy lol. But no i am not using fertilizers as of now. I use well water a it has much higher iron concentration and my fish that i hav currently are doing fine. Havving a little algae but nothing
I cant fix with water changes

 

You would probably benefit most from dosing Excel if you dont plan on using a CO2 injection system.

 

Ive used a DIY Co2 system
On a smaller tank. Ill look into a real one fo a larger tank. Whats a good brand?

 

Having tried just about every fertilizer brand. I would say ADA line or the Fertz line. Both are very good. Fertz has measurements but amount of fertilizer depends on how your plants are taking in nutrients. Every plant tank I've has had a different amount of fertilizer requirement. For example if you have plants that take in most of their nutrients through their roots then you must keep the soil richer than if you had stem plants where they absorb most through the water column.

In all my experiments with fertilizer keeping a UV sterilizer that you can drop in has been my best friend. When you dose too much and you get green water you may want to tear down your tank.

Even when some of my friends who asked Amano directly about fertilizer quantities his answer on correct volumes of fertilizer his answer was a general one stressing tank balance. Also the tanks at the Nature Aquarium Gallery is different in dosing requirements.

I guess I'm off topic but when you dose remember to base your amount on how fast your plants are growing. If you have slow plant growth algae will benefit from the fertilizer more than your plants. The first time dose very little and see if that spawns any algae growth. If it happens cut that amount back.

 

Milwaukee makes a good regulator. Not too expensive either. All you need is the regulator with bubble counter, diffuser, check valve, CO2 tubing, and the bottle. Get at least a 5lb bottle. That should last you a while even at 3 bubbles per second. Dont skimp on cost on the diffuser as better diffuser will give you finer bubbles. Finer bubbles lead to easier absorption and thus you dont need as much CO2. In the future you may want a to invest in a higher end counter because the ones attached to the regulator are not always accurate. Inline counters near suction cupped on the tank are best. Also depends on how long your main CO2 line is. In any case if your fish are gasping at the surface then you have way too much CO2 going.