Re: [GSAS-Member] Am I doing the right thing with Vals?

["Clifford Miller" <clifford@clevergeek.com>]

I've had great results from the super-cheap Osmacote pellets-- which are
roughly BB sized, and easy to poke underneath the substrate with a small
dowel rod without getting wet or clouding the tank (you will also need the
dowel to shoo your cichlids away as they try to taste the fertilizer prior
to getting it beneath the sand).

The little pellets have the same ratios as the tree/shrub tabs that are
suggested on some planted tank sites, you don't have to bother to break
them up. A $3 bag from Home Depot lasts forever (well, going on four
years-- come to think of it, by now the bags probably cost more than
that!).

I think my stem plants do a better job of out competing algae when the
nutes are hitting the roots instead of sitting in the water column.

Cliff


> Yeah, I ended up with one of the bunches.  I think I was just going a
> little crazy with my huge bottle of excel.  I'll cut it down to very
> small doses less often and see if that helps.  Some information that I
> recently uncovered indicates that they benefit from fertilizer tabs at
> their roots, so I guess i'll be picking up some of those. :)
> On May 22, 2008, at 3:31 PM, Seattle_Aquarist wrote:
>
>> Hi Carol,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have both Val and Crypt in my tank, and dosed substantially more
>> (about
>> twice as much) than Erik Olson indicated in his April 19th post
>> about Luis
>> Navarro's Excel treatment for algae.  I posted my results April 28th,
>> including the effect on the various plants in my tank.  The Val and
>> Crypt
>> were affected at my higher dosage, but it was minimal and all have
>> recovered.  I do not recall Erik mentioning any problems at the dosage
>> levels he used, in fact he sold several large bunches of Val at mini-
>> auction
>> at the end of the last meeting.  Hope my input helps.
>>
>>
>>
>> Roy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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