Exactly what have I bought?

[mindfestival]

Afternoon,

I am aware that EI does not cause algae blooms.

I have a fortified year old substrate that has seen many rookie mistakes.

My plant mass is not so heavy, but I do have a hairgrass carpet across a 95 gallon.

I cannot obtain dry ferts here in oz.

I was 'sold' these from the LFS, and am not sure exactly what is what.

I am aware of the fundamentals , Iron, Mg, NPK etc.

Can somebody shed some light onto these two bottles of pre-mix, one is labeled Trace, and the other 'Fertil'.

I dont think my demand on this is that high, yet, so I am letting the substrate do most of the work.

Check these out, sorry i couldnt rotate..

[Higher Thinking]

The first one that lists your micro nutrients are just that, micro nutrients. Plants need NPK as macro nutrients. Those are nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. Plants need these nutrients in high quantity and the micros are needed at lower levels. None of your ferts contain phosphorous or nitrogen. Unless you have decent lighting and plant growth you may not need these as they result from fish food (phosphorous) and natural nitrate cycle from your bacteria (nitrates), but if you start noticing deficiencies you might want to dose them. There is plenty of members on here that sell ferts, I am wondering if they would be willing to ship to Australia, IDK what the legal ramifications are.

[mindfestival]

thanks for the prompt reply.

Ill do some investigation.

My fish load isnt that high, so i doubt that my Nitrogen would be either.

I run pretty clean hardware too.

[Hoppy]

You may be able to find "stump killer" in a hardware or garden supply store. Those are usually 100% potassium nitrate, KNO3, and work fine as a source of nitrates. For phosphorous, some versions of bottled enemas are virtually 100% phosphates. Fleet Enema is one sold here, actually one version of Fleet Enema. Those two common substances were widely used in planted tanks before the basic chemicals became so easy to obtain.