New to the forum with questions

[stuattti]

I am new to forums. I just got my easy Green fertilizer. 2/3 of my plants are low light like cryptsand anubias,  and the other 1/3 are stem plants like bacopa, rotalla indica, and water wisteria, etc. Do I apply the fertilzer  once a week or twice and how often do I change water  to remove nitrates or do I test weekly?

Thank..stuattti

[Jungle Fan]

The amount of fertilizer you add will depend on what type of lights you have and what intensity of light they produce. For Easy Green, since you are new to using it follow the instructions on the bottle in regards to your tank size and once a week if your lights are low light, and if your lights are medium lights dose twice. Make sure to add root tabs for your crypts because they are root feeders and need that extra iron and potassium; Rotala indica, being a potential red plant can benefit from the iron as well. How you do water changes will depend on testing, however I'm a big believer in 50% weekly water changes and it has served me well.

[stuattti]

6 minutes ago, Jungle Fan said:

The amount of fertilizer you add will depend on what type of lights you have and what intensity of light they produce. For Easy Green, since you are new to using it follow the instructions on the bottle in regards to your tank size and once a week if your lights are low light, and if your lights are medium lights dose twice. Make sure to add root tabs for your crypts because they are root feeders and need that extra iron and potassium; Rotala indica, being a potential red plant can benefit from the iron as well. How you do water changes will depend on testing, however I'm a big believer in 50% weekly water changes and it has served me well.

I had a serious algae issue and re did the entire tank with new gravel, plants and water. Trying to keep algae down so I cut feeding down and  using the Fluval 2.0 light at 100% with cloud effect so it seems to be about 50% of the actual lighting. It is on about 10 hours and as I mentioned the cloud effect downs the brightness pretty much. That is why I am confused on the fertilizer. Thank you for your answer. I will get some root tabs.

[Jungle Fan]

I would cut the photoperiod down to about 8 hours and see how your stem plants are o.k. with it and if you still have algae problems.

While I use Kessils on my tank and they do give the shimmer effect of sun light in a creek when combined with surface water movement, I'm not a big fan of cloud, and other special effects. I recently got rid of the blue moon lights I had added because they effectively just added hours of light only algae was able to use.

Special lighting effects tend to  just add to the complexity of figuring out the right dosage in a puzzle that already has lots of other parts like duration, and intensity of light, water quality, and CO2 level (if you are adding CO2), and special needs for stem plants, or root feeders.

I know a lot of folks are happy with the special effects but in a heavily planted tank with lots of other things to tinker with and plenty of individual light settings in regards to color and intensity it's the one thing where I simplified.

Like I said try by reducing the photoperiod to 8 hours and go from there. It's easier to figure out if you don't change too much at the same time. Sometimes the amount of fish food, or how often you feed can also be a factor.