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Do you like to use dirt in your tank, a different fertilized substrate (perhaps like fluval stratum or even root tablets), only inert substrate, or none of the above? Why do you use dirt? Why do you not use dirt? What is your experience like? You can provide as little or as much information as you'd like! I'd love to hear about it. My personal opinion is I like dirted tanks and think the pros outweigh the cons, but I wish I had researched more before jumping right in. Dirted tanks cause a bit of problems: primarily making the water muddy or murky, especially if you don't know what you're doing. I used my own mix for "dirt": peat moss, organic soil mix, clay, decaying leaf litter, and crushed lava rock. I knew this would provide nutrients to my plants, and I was confident. But this was my first time using live plants, and my first time using dirt. Gosh, I didn't know what I was getting into... I had to do five water changes the first week setting up my tank, simply because some of the dirt matter dissolved into the water. To cap off the substrate, I had to use almost two inches of fine pea gravel + sand mix. That being said, I do not regret it: I would just go about it differently in the future. So here is what I would change: get the dirt wet AND waterlogged before capping off with inert substrate or filling the tank. This will reduce the random bubbles. don't cheap out on inert substrate: get more that I think I will need. At first I only got enough to cover barely an inch deep, which was not enough. It just caused more pain and ended up mixing my inert substrate in with my dirt mixture. It was super difficult and I had to restart once or twice. after I did get my inert substrate figured out, I filled the tank all the way up before planting. Not the best decision, as I learned. Instead, next time I will fill the tank about half way and then plant. Honestly, just like planting a veggie garden, I would probably "mound" the plants with sand/gravel a little to encourage them to STAY IN THE DARN GROUND. I also learned not to be scared of weights, glues, and strings. At first I was kind of stuck-up and thought it wasn't natural and ergo bad if you used things like plant weights or if you glued/tied your anubias down. HECK NO. These are tools. Use them! That is something important I learned. When I was putting moss in my tank I quickly learned I needed string to tie em down... and when I purchased some rotala it came tied with a weight, and gosh this stuff is helpful. I love these tools and glad I tried them. So how do you feel about dirt in tanks? What did you learn?

I have been trying to balance a high-tech planted setup. I have rummynose tetras, some corys and an Apistogramma agazzii in a 20 long. I have C02, a fluval 3.0, and an aquaclear 50 which provides excellent surface agitation and circulation. C02 levels are at a safe level running at about 1.5 bubbles per second. Drop checker is a dark green and has never gotten anywhere near yellow. I have UNS aquasoil under a coarse sand cap. This tank is about 7-8 months old but I admittedly neglected fertilizing for several months resulting in a lot of melt. I obviously wasn't dosing nearly enough ferts. My nitrates were always almost 0 and my plants were suffering. Lots of melt in "easy plants". I guess the c02 and light was pushing the pants to grow and the lack of nutrients led to melt. Ive slowly been trying to up my nitrates to somewhere around 40-80ppm, I have plenty of plants to absorb the nitrates. Plants are slowly starting to look a lot better and algae is dying off. I have been increasing my doses of easy green slowly to account for the added light and c02. I perform a 5-gallon water change once a week. So far it has been difficult to get my nitrates past 40ppm. The rummynose are looking great; very active schoolers and their heads are nice and red, indicating good health. However my apisto looks like it is about to die. No sign of heavy breathing but he is sticking to the bottom acting very lethargic and is barely swimming around. A lot of resources online suggest that apistos (and other cichlids from around the world) are extremely sensitive to nitrates. I suspect that this is a common boogeyman in our hobby but who knows? I doubt my apisto is dying due to excess nitrates. Could it just have been sick from the store? He has never looked very active even when I first brought him home. Again, my c02 levels look to be safe as all my other fish are healthy and active with no gasping or signs of stress. I also care for lake tanganyikan cichlids that many consider "sensitive" and that cant be further from the truth, they are very very hardy once provided good stable pH. I monitor nitrates but not as obsessively as many online would want me to with africans. I try not to change pH in my planted aquarium in an effort to maintain a stable environment.

Hello, I am going into the third week of cycling my planted tank, but I have noticed some murky-looking substance at the top of my water level. I haven’t messed with the tank, outside of adding liquid fertilizer (Easy Green) a couple of times a week. Is this a sign I’m over-fertilizing my plants or something else? Also, would anyone be kind enough to tell me the state of my plants. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Does easy green spoil? I dosed about 3x the amount needed for a 5 gallon tank and wasn’t registering any nitrates after each dose even after waiting a few hours. should i talk to Candy about this?

I just got back into aquariums after about 5 years (as stated in my previous post). I'm wanting to get my cycle jump started on a new 10-gallon planted tank but the fish food method does not seem to be doing what is expected so I wanted to use straight ammonia instead but all of the ammonia I can find in my tiny town has extra surfactants and stuff in them. So, I was wondering if anyone knew if I could use the product: "Alaska Fish Emulsion Plant Food, 5-1-1 Fertilizer" to get it started. This is a product used to fertilize regular garden plants and I read something saying that you shouldn't use it in your aquarium because it has ammonia in it (since it's made of fish), but it's the ammonia that I'm needing in this case. Any ideas/suggestions?

Hello everyone! I continue to have trouble with algae on my plants. I have watched lots of YouTube videos on the subject and can’t seem to get it right. I would appreciate some guidance on my light and fertilizer balance, if you don’t mind. Current setup is a typical 55 tank: Father Fish-style dirt/sand substrate. Two Aquarium Co-Op medium sponge filters and a AquaClear 20. Ph average 6.8 (7.4 out of the tap). Parameters are great, per the test kit. Nitrates average 40-50. Fluval 3.0 plant light on top: Light settings: 3-hour sunrise from 7:30-10:30am. Daytime colors all 30%, except zero blue. 3.5-hour sunset from 5:00-8:30. Nighttime is 3% blue, 1% pink from 8:30-11:00pm. I put Easy root tabs in about once a month, and about three squirts of Easy Green, or H2O Plants Vital every other night. A couple of Vallisneria, but all Java ferns and Anubias varieties beyond that. Two decent-sized goldfish, two Yo-Yo loaches, two hillstream loaches, about six kuhli loaches and about five small Amano shrimp. Tried mystery snails, but Yo-Yos harassed them to death. Please see photos for what I have. It’s been this way for months. Not sure to add light, lower light, or what? Any input is appreciated! 🙂 Thank you, Chris

I’m still learning about planted tanks, and I have a theory about what’s going on in my tank. I’m hoping some of you could offer your input. I have recently-setup, 22 long, planted tank. It’s “mid tech”: it’s got a pretty strong light for the tank’s depth and it has a home brew, yeast based CO2 system that adds some carbon. It has some shrimp and 9 pea puffers. I was dosing easy green two or three times per week, but my nitrate levels were very low. Also, some of the plants weren’t growing very well. As an experiment, I started dosing two pumps of easy green every morning. I’ve also been measuring nitrates every morning and they have stabilized at 10ppm. Since I’ve started doing this, all of the plants have started growing more vigorously. I also got test kits for potassium and phosphorus: potassium is at 30 ppm and phosphorus was at 0.5ppm. The general hardness for the tank is 23° or about 400 ppm, which is much higher than my tapwater and my other tanks: they are about 14°. I read somewhere on the co-op website that a lot of tanks get their phosphorus from leftover fish food. However, I’m just feeding the pea, puffers live snails, so there is no leftover food. My theory is that my tank had a phosphorus and nitrogen deficiency, which the daily easy green is fixing. I’m also wondering if the magnesium in EZ green is causing my hardness to go up. So what should I do? My plan is to do a large water change to bring down the Gh, and start supplementing with phosphorus. But I think I still need my nitrates to be higher. Should I also supplement specifically with nitrogen in addition to biweekly easy green? thanks!

I have a brand new 22 gal tanks that’s holding a bunch of plants I’d like to grow out while it cycles and I collect hard scape etc for the final setup. I’ve dosed it a few times in the last week with 2 shots of Easy Green but I’m still reading zero nitrates. The plants are growing. Should I keep dosing till I read some nitrates? How much? How often?

I normally don't order lots of root tabs. I should; I have tons of plants that can use them. But they are more buoyant than anything I've ever seen in a aquarium, and it's really difficult to get them deep under the root of my plants (even with forceps) so that they'll stay there before the tablet casing begins to degrade! It sometimes takes me several minutes to deposit one tablet, and it's a task I really don't look forward to. When folks on this forum a couple weeks ago mentioned a very expensive, unavailable-to-the-US mechanism made just for this purpose, I hit the internets. But there was no way I could have something like this shipped to the US for less than $60! So I started researching the DIY route, and after some trial and error and lots of research, I've come up with this one-handed solution. It can be made for less than $10 in parts from your local Home Depot. In fact, you can make two for about the same cost! It is sized for Aquarium Co-Op Easy Root Tabs. PARTS: So let's dive in. These are the parts I collected together (non-affiliate links) : 1. Straight PEX Pipe: 1/4" ID, 5' length: $1.76 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Apollo-1-4-in-x-5-ft-White-PEX-Pipe-APPW514/301541226 2. Wood dowel: 3/16" diameter, 4' length: $0.70 https://www.homedepot.com/p/3-16-in-x-48-in-Wood-Round-Dowel-HDDH31648/204354369 3. Drawer pull: 1-1/14" birch cabinet knob: $0.98 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Liberty-Rowland-1-1-4-in-32-mm-Birch-Wood-Round-Cabinet-Knob-P10512H-BIR-C/204143998 4. Drawer pull: 1-13/16" birch cabinet knob: $1.88 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Liberty-Classic-1-13-16-in-46-mm-Unfinished-Birch-Wood-Round-Cabinet-Knob-P10515C-BIR-C5/100156480 5. Springs: 6-pack zinc-plated compression springs (used the 3/8" x 1-1/8" x 0.041" spring): $4.22 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-Zinc-Plated-Compression-Spring-6-Pack-16087/202045468 TOTAL: $9.54 TOOLS: 1. Drill and assorted bits 2. Wood glue (or white glue) 3. 5-minute epoxy PREP: The 1/4" PEX pipe does not fit the Easy Root tabs. I made it fit by enlarging the first inch or so of one end of the pipe using a 5/16" drill bit. Now, the smaller end of the Easy Root Tab fits very snugly. If I don't push it in too far, it's a perfect grip! Next, I cut a 12" length of the PEX pipe and a 13" length of the dowel. I don't have very deep tanks, so this is fine for me. But this can be cut to any length you need; just make sure the dowel is always one inch longer than the tube. The wooden knobs already have holes drilled in them, which made it very easy to enlarge them to exactly the diameters I needed. For the smaller knob, I enlarged the hole to 3/16", making sure not to drill all the way through. I glued in my wood dowel with a drop of wood glue to hold it permanently: For the larger knob, I enlarged the hole to 3/8" diameter, this time going all the way through. I made sure to start with a 3/16" bit, and repeatedly went larger and larger until I reached 3/8". This ensured my hole stayed centered and I had a nice clean cut all the way through. I glued in the length of PEX pipe with 5-minute epoxy. This should hold well enough for my purposes. I'm using the shorter, wider spring for this project (3/8" x 1-1/8" x 0.41"). For good measure, I used some 5-minute epoxy to glue the spring to my plunger. This is totally optional, but gives me one less piece I can lose. That's pretty much all there is to do. I just inserted the plunger in the tube and I'm ready to try it out! I placed an Easy Root Tab in the end, just far enough for it to grip, but not so far that it won't push out easily. I inserted the tool with one hand into the tank, pushed the plunger, and voila! A deposited tablet in 5 seconds! But I am over the moon about how this tool turned out. I just placed about 20 tabs in two minutes. Even with coarse gravel, forcing the pill in was no problem. The two pieces come apart for drying, as that wood dowel won't last forever. Now I understand why the professional ones are so expensive. This makes things so much easier. I'm definitely making a longer one for deeper tanks. Hope you find this useful. Thanks for reading! Bill

It’s almost been about 5 1/2 months since I have set my nano tank up and it’s been amazing. Although I’ve never really understood the calculating and all the scientific things that go on into a tank, I finally got a tds meter and shrimp minerals from saltyshrimp to start somewhere lol. I got the meter and shrimp minerals a few hours ago and I was shocked. I surely figured my tds was going to be over 300 since I’ve never tested it but check it out!😁 I haven’t even added the minerals nor do I use RO or distilled water. I do one water change a month of about 15% water. I don’t vacuum the substrate since shrimp are grazers and will eat just about anything. I add aquasafe to my tap water and stir the water for a few minutes and then let it sit for some hours. (Always test your water too) I dose my plants with 1 pump of Easy Green on one day of each week. Sometimes I may do 1 1/2 pumps depending on if I’ve trimmed plants. keep in mind, your tank could be different than mine so everything could be different. TDS / 173 Temp / 68-75

In the past I’ve had fish in a tank for a while then decided to get plants and fertilize with easy green. So established tank nitrates already present. No worries, but what about starting a fresh tank with plants? No nitrates so if it’s a 20G use 2 squirts and next day maybe not even 10ppm do I dose again to get nitrates up? If so how often till I reach my desired amount? Daily, couple times a day, keep hitting it till it reads what I want? I ask because I set up a plant grow out tank and needed to get nitrates up as fast as possible. I did like 5 doses in 3 days now to maintain I’m dosing 3ish times a week. Also I now have a 125G with plants that was a fresh restart and it’s fairly heavily planted and I can’t get up past 20ppm dosing once a day and that’s a lot of squirts every time. Ive got fish in now so that will help but I want my plants to thrive as well (all were transplanted from other tanks)

I really want to get a great planted tank but I can't seem to be able to feed my plans without feeding algae. I wouldn't mind the algae but it grows on the plans and suffocates them. My lights are on timers and I'm adding flourish liquid fertilizer and root tabs. I've been trying to keep NO3 around 20 to 30 ppm and I've been pretty successful. My lights are on a timer and go on and off so they're on 8 of 12 hours (two separate two hour breaks in the day) I started using some gluteraldrahyde (the ingredient in easy carbon) to stop the algae and it's slowly killing it back but I'm afraid 1) it's harming the thin leaf plants 2) as soon as I reduce the dose I'm going right back to growing more algae. What should my next steps be?

I have a 10 gallon tank with fish, and have been trying to be more careful about my water parameters. I'm using EasyStrips but I do have a test kit. Whenever I use Easy Green (1 pump per water change), the Nitrates increase and stay increased days later. Shouldn't the plants be absorbing it? I noticed there is nitrogen in the ingredients list, and tried not using it, but the plants suffer. My tank was previously cycled and no fish have died for the few months I've had them. Without adding EasyGreen there are little nitrates or nitrites detected. The nitrates are in the "low" zone when I check them but I still worry it will effect my fish. Here is the tank and the water test (a few days after a water change with easy green)

I have a 20 gallon, about 1/2 full of healthy hornwort to combat and prevent green water. But I currently have green water. Been 2 weeks. I'm keeping the light off for now, except a couple hours of very dim per day to help the fish find their food. I've decreased the adult's feeding from 2x to 1x per day, though I shouldn't fast them since about half are preggy, and I can't reduce the feeding for the tiniest fry. The tank is bare-bottom, with a ton of MTS, so no food is getting lost. (I also watch to make sure the filter doesn't grab it.) In the next few days, I'll put a few of my extra neocaridina in there, since they'll help re-process the MTS poo. My current question: Nitrate is ~5. Do I add Easy Green to help the hornwort, or leave nitrates low to starve the green water?

Ordered a couple of days ago and opened my package to see that they the Co-op has got new packaged root tabs! I LOVE this design instead of the sleeve personally. I thought I would also get some pictures for those who haven't seen it yet. I hope they continue to go with this packaging.

I have a low to medium light planted tank and have been using AC's Easy Green. I also have a small bag of Purigen in my Tidal 35 HOB filter. Should I remove the Purigen when dosing the water with Easy Green once a week? If so, how long should I have it removed? I just want to make sure the Purigen isn't pulling out the nutrients that I'm intentionally putting into the water for my plants. This is my first planted tank so I'm figuring things out. Thanks!

Hi all, I was doing my water change on my 75 gallon planted tank and added my easy green. I filled another bucket of water to keep filling the tank and added more easy green, after I dumped that bucket in that I realized I double dosed my aquarium. Is this going to cause issues? I try to do a 5 gallon water change daily. Are my fish and plants at risk of illness or injury from a double dose of easy green?

Hi there, Just wondering if anyone else has had this problem or not and if there's a way to fix it. I kept the fertilizer in the fridge and realized after a while that you don't need to keep it cold after doing some research. I noticed that the liquid inside has developed crystals so I left the bottle out over night hoping it was just ice. Next day, the fertilizer is still crystallized. Is there a way to fix this/ is it safe to still use in my aquariums? Thanks!

I'm thinking that, instead of simply disposing the aquarium water resulting from water changes, the aquarium water would make good garden fertilizer. The aquarium water contains nitrates, biodegradables and some nutrients, which the garden plants could utilize. Have you had experience with using the aquarium water as fertilizer or have some thoughts on whether this is a reasonable idea? Thanks.

So Newb question for y'all. Is plant fertilizer (like Aquarium Co-op's All-in-One) "food" for aquatic plants? Do I need to provide animal waste so my plants do not die while the tank is cycling?

Context: I have two tanks that have algae problems (surprise surprise) to some degree, and I've been doing around 40% water changes every week to keep it at bay. The two tanks are: 5.5 Gallon with Finnex Stingray for 6 hours, nitrate testing at zero. Crazy hair algae and cyano that I have to pull every week. 6 Emerald Rasboras, and snails. 20 gallon long with Finnex Stingray for 9 hours, nitrate testing at around 10 ppm. Algae isnt as bad, just some BBA will build up on large flat leaves of anubias or such if I miss a week. 10 Red Eye Tetras, 1 Electric Blue Ram, a whole smattering of Kuhli Loaches, Amano shrimp and snails as algae control. I'm attaching a picture of today's nitrate test for context, this is a week after my last water change, no fertilizers. (Left is 5.5 gallon, right is 20 gallon). The question is, should I stop being such a nut about water changes and adjust with fertilizers and light instead? I tried being hands off with the 5.5 gallon but the hair algae just goes bonkers. If I skip a week on the 20 gallon, there's definitely a noticeable buildup of algae. Unfortunately I don't think I can cram in any more clean-up in either tank as they are bit full on stocking I think. Thanks in advance!

I recently received an order from Aquarium Co-Op of Anubias Golden and Anubias Nana. Inside one of the pots were little round objects. They look a little like salmon eggs but orange in color. Is it possible they are seeds that haven’t grown? Or perhaps some fertilizer?

1) What is a good target number (ppm) for Iron, specifically with red plants? 2) What test do you prefer? I was looking at the Seachem test. (edited: I think I mispoke earlier reffering to the seachem test as strips) 3) Should I just forget 1 and 2 and look at try to let the plants tell me.... I will probably test just to know the baseline but interested to hear how folks like to manage this.

When I went to order some of my plants from a source I have never orderd from I saw that they had some "Dry Fertilizer" up until today I have only used liquad stuff. Well, I decided to give it a try and thought I would create a thread for it as I document how well my dry fertilizer is. Is it better then the all in one liquad stuff like easy green? Heres what the package looks like: I accidently clicked the "high tech" option instead of the "low tech" option so hopefully it will be alright. As you can see it does not say how much to dose, it only says "the following dose will add _______ to your water". I could see how one (espically a beginner) may find this confusing. After filling a old 500ml hand sanititzer bottle (it has been throughly rinsed) with condtined water I add the powder. I must say that when adding the powder I made a HUGE mess. I reccemend fillind the bottle up with water then add the powder, I overflowed the bottle lots when trying to get it all in. I then shook it until you could not see the powderd substance. It says to shake every couple hours and wait for 24hrs. I shall update this thread then. I will be taking the hand sanitizer label off and putting a homemade label on it.

Hello. Need help identifying these small yellow balls in my shrimp tank. I saw these appear a couple of weeks ago and ignored it. Now they've turned translucent. I took one out and it squished like an egg. They are bigger than shrimp eggs so I don't they any shrimp would have dropped it. It's an open tank so I guess an insect must have laid eggs?