LyreTail's Aquarium

Plants and Algae

The Nutrient Re-Set Method

My goal is to really make plant keeping easy and fun. I do very little testing of my water and have nearly algae free tanks. If you read my articles you may think that all this seems technical and perhaps complicated, but it can be much easier than it reads.

My Setups

I am running about 3 to 4 watts per gallon of light for 12 hours each day and have a CO2 injection system on each tank that I only fiddle with when I need to get refilled. My weekly maintenance consists of pruning the tanks, doing a 50% water change, wiping a little algae off the glass using a "Mag Float", and cleaning the mechanical pre filter pads. All of which only takes me about 1/2 hour in my 75 gallon tank. I do not ever gravel vacuum since my substrate is rather compact, but I do use a gravel siphon to do the water changes. I do not fertilize the substrate anymore since I have added Malaysian Trumpet Snails. They seem to do a great job of doing that for me. My substrate is a mixture of Eco Complete, Fluorite and Caribsea "Peace River" micro gravel.

Fertilization Regime

I use a system that I call The "Nutrient Re-Set Method". This is where I exchange 50% of the water each week and then dose that new 50% of the water with the diluted fertilizers you can view in the next pages. Then I also add 5 ml (1 tsp) per each ten US gallons of Flourish Excel to the full tank volume to supplement the CO2 injection and to help suppress algae. This recipe can be used for any planted tank, even the higher lit ones. Keeping the balance of nutrients is what is truly important and is what all these methods try to accomplish in one way or the other.

The name "Nutrient Re-Set Method� comes from weekly resetting fertilizer levels with the large 50% partial water change and then only dosing the fertilizer to that amount of replacement water. It does not matter if you have a low fish load in the aquarium because what you are doing is ensuring that there is a balance of fertilization in at least half the water in the aquarium. Sometimes overdosing corrections can be made in the form of just not adding any fertilizer for one week or adding an extra dose of something that is lacking. I do not usually do any testing unless a problem arises which is normally in the form of excess algae. Over the years, I have slowly adjusted the fertilization levels to get the best results in both plant growth and algae free tanks with weekly dose, instead of other methods that do daily dosing.

Put in the effort to replicate most of this and you should have great success. I can not stress the importance of fertilization, lighting and CO2 for a healthy and spectacular looking tank.

Differences You May Encounter

Your tap water may be different than mine is up here in the Pacific Northwest USA. My water is very soft and has no additional Nitrate, Phosphate, GH or KH to it, so I add those things where you may not need to add one or more of them. The only way you will know what your tap water has in it, is to test these parameters. Most plants prefer a pH just under 7.0 and temperatures under 78 deg F, however these parameters are species specific.

Lighting is also a very complex topic and makes a large difference in growth rates and fertilization usage. Most plants prefer lights that have a high red and blue wavelengths which usually means the light will put out a purple or pinkish hue. Not all full spectrum lights are ideal since they may not provide enough red light waves. A 12 hour photoperiod is recommended on all tropical plants because that is where they will do the best.

In Conclusion

To encourage people that want to try planted tanks, I sell these fertilizers in pre measured amounts where all you have to do is dump them into a 1 liter bottle and shake. (It reduces the complexity for you) I even provide you with a label to put on the bottle so you know exactly how much to add for each 10 gallons of water. I am not trying to profit at this, but just trying to make it easier on people just getting started. A lot of people try my starter kit and then go for a larger bulk of fertilizer elements from some other source in the future. I encourage this and that is why I put all the exact formulas on the labels and include other sources to buy the fertilizers.

Below are some more articles that detail The Nutrient ReSet Method and some setup techniques. Remember that this is not the only way to run a planted tank, but it is one way that I have found to be successful.

Getting started

Micro Gravels and Fluorite