[quote:973a26ba86="cheeboonyong"]My question therefore: is Teo's assertion true? I'm already pushing in root tabs now but suspect it'll take another couple of months before it takes effect, so asking anyone with experience first...[/quote:973a26ba86]
Hello! A good page if you are a fan of crypts is the following:
http://users.bart.nl/~crypts/
They really do like a good fertile substrate, some of the more delicate species are grown by folks in strange stuff like decaying leaves, altho this isn't done in a fish aquarium and these species usually aren't sold to hobbyists.
I and others I know have grown C. wendtii without substrate fertilization but it is much slower and stunted. Here in the US we have a product called Jobes Palm and Fern Spikes, they are slow release fertiliziers but unlike aquarium root tabs which usually don't have nitrogen or phopshate, these have both. The reason we use the Palm and Fern variety is that they are lowest in urea (NO3NH3) which can easily cause green water.
I am interested in what root monsters are, we don't have any information over here on ADA substrates and I am very interested. I've heard the ADA Aquasoils affect pH and that makes me think it has peat in it? I believe I've read the Powersand does have quite a bit of peat, this would provide nutrients similar to our Jobes spikes.
A good number of people over here use mineralized soil as a substrate, a 1" layer covered with 2" of plain gravel is recommended. Soil can be very tricky to manage though, as it is very variable depending on where it is collected from. This is a little off the beaten path and requires quite a bit of reading to do right, Diana Walstad's "The Ecology of The Planted Tank" (I think the title is right) is required reading. Other plants that prefer a fertile substrate are the Echinodorus genus, the Aponogeton genus, Barclaya longifolia, basically the rosette plants. All plants seem to benefit with a little something extra in the substrate, this can be as simple as a little peat/mulm at setup or something much richer.
Good luck,
Jeff
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