[Dilla]

Hello all,

I am brand new to the forum and to the world on a planted aquarium. I set up my first one about a month ago with just plants and started adding fish a few days ago. I have been using the API root tabs, CO2 booster, and leaf zone aquarium plant food. My question is the directions on these have me dumping the co2 in everyday and and the plant food every week, plus the root tabs once a month....is this okay for the fish? I just feel like it is a lot of chemicals going in and have never dumped chemicals like that into an aquarium before.

 

[Hoppy]

First: You are dosing glutaraldehyde instead of CO2, which is a gas, not a liquid.

If you have a lot of fast growing plants, which you don't, and if you use relatively high light, which it doesn't look like you do, but you could be, then the plants will be driven to high growth rates by the light and will quickly deplete all of the naturally occurring nutrients in the water. The plants grow every day, so they need to be fed the nutrients they are short of every day or so. If you don't test the water regularly to find out how much of those nutrients are in the water you can avoid having way too much of any of them by doing big water changes every few days, like once a week or so.

Since you have very few plants, even if you do have high light you will probably not run short of any of the nutrients for a week or so. An exception is the glutaraldehyde, which substitutes for CO2, which breaks down in the tank about a day or two after you dose it, so daily dosages are highly recommended.

Most, if not all bottled fertilizers for aquariums have directions on the bottle that are most appropriate for relatively low light. Dosing them per the directions may be the best idea for your tank.