Is seachem flourish enough?

I recently bought seachem flourish for my moss balls. I am looking at getting another plant (a beginner like amazon sword depending on the selection at my lfs). I am pretty confused about all the lighting, c02, and everything. I am not planning on getting a co2 system. My light stays on for 8 hours and it was labelled on the website as a bright white LED. I am wondering if I also should buy seachem excel for my plant or is flourish all I need? I have cory cats, mystery snails and nerite snails, will this affect them?

 

I recently bought seachem flourish for my moss balls. I am looking at getting another plant (a beginner like amazon sword depending on the selection at my lfs). I am pretty confused about all the lighting, c02, and everything. I am not planning on getting a co2 system. My light stays on for 8 hours and it was labelled on the website as a bright white LED. I am wondering if I also should buy seachem excel for my plant or is flourish all I need? I have cory cats, mystery snails and nerite snails, will this affect them?

This depends if your tank is low tech vs high tech. From what I can tell it seems like you are going for pretty easy plants and no special lighting, so I assume you are going for a low tech tank. Seachem flourish is a basic fertilizer and would work for simpler plants, but it seems to be lacking on the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. These are important, but again it just depends on the plants you are trying to keep. What is your substrate? And are the amazon swords the only plants you are planning to add? If you want to go for more demanding plants Seachem has other fertilizers you can supplement with flourish.

 

This depends if your tank is low tech vs high tech. From what I can tell it seems like you are going for pretty easy plants and no special lighting, so I assume you are going for a low tech tank. Seachem flourish is a basic fertilizer and would work for simpler plants, but it seems to be lacking on the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. These are important, but again it just depends on the plants you are trying to keep. What is your substrate? And are the amazon swords the only plants you are planning to add? If you want to go for more demanding plants Seachem has other fertilizers you can supplement with flourish.

Thanks for the reply I am planning to start with one easier plant and see how it goes so it'll be awhile before I decide to add another one. If I did add another, it would be an easy one as well. My substrate is gravel. Do underwater plants need dirt?

 

Moss balls are generally real hearty, so long as you have nitrate and phosphate (and light) in the aquarium, they will continue to grow without supplementing fertilizers. Swords, on the other hand, will need fertilizers, but they're heavy root feeders, and will pull most of their nutrients from the gravel bed.

Co2 just acts as a steroid for plants to grow, it's not 'needed' in your aquarium, but it makes plants grow like they're racing eachother, and is typically used in tanks that have a lot of plants (considered high tech). I agree with above in that what you're looking to do seems pretty low tech, its easier to maintain Imo.

Flourish doesn't have a great stocking of nitrogen and phosphorus because typically, these two thing are usually always present in the tank in enough concentrations to where it doesn't need to be dosed. However, Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are the 3 most important macronutrients for your plants, they SHOULD be present in higher concentrations than other trace minerals. Plants will 'eat' the nitrate that breaks down from the nitrogen cycle, and some of the phosphate that breaks down from our fish foods, but without dosing potassium too, You may see some yellowing or browning leaves, maybe even leaves growing with holes in them.

Flourish excel is...supposed to act as a 'carbon' replacement. but, I would steer you more towards flourish advance (or comprehensive, if they still make it). Flourish advance is good for new plants because it's a phytohormone that helps plants establish good root systems, ideally, it's dosed shortly after adding the plants, and once they're established, you shouldn't need to dose it anymore. Flourish is great for a lot of medium to low difficulty plants (like java fern, anubias, valisnera, ludwigia, cryptocoryn), If anything, you may need to dose potassium separately, and MAYBE iron separately IF you have plants that have red/purple leaves. I know you just bought the liquid doser, but I would also recommend getting some flourish root tabs as well, if you do add swords to your tank. (I use both flourish and flourish tabs, flourish advance, potassium, and fluval iron for my planted tank, I dose regularly after water changes and occasionally if I notice my plants looking odd.) you can place one root tab 3 inches away and near your swords while also dosing liquid ferts for your other plants.

Plants dont NEED aqua soil to grow. The reason it's recommended over traditional gravel is really only because 1.) the soil will usually leech and hold in nutrients that flow into it from the water column (whereas inert, stone gravel will have those nutrients flowing through the cracks and crevices, not really staying put.) and 2.) it's easier for the plant roots to make a home and push down into the soil naturally. When there is gravel, they may have a harder time latching on and staying put because there isn't much for them to 'hold onto', the gravel is just weighing them down - per se.

This doesn't mean you can't have gravel with plants, you absolutely can. But the smaller the gravel pieces, the better. Large river stone is harder to keep plants in for the above 2 reasons (but still not impossible at all-by any means).

 

Thanks for the reply I am planning to start with one easier plant and see how it goes so it'll be awhile before I decide to add another one. If I did add another, it would be an easy one as well. My substrate is gravel. Do underwater plants need dirt?

They don’t need dirt. Since you have gravel (which doesn’t have nutrients), it is a good thing you are dosing! Some planted tank substrates have a lot of nutrients and with simpler plants don’t necessarily need fertilizer. Some easy plants you can add to your current setup with Seachem flourish are amazon swords (which I saw you are planning to add), anarchis, crypts, cabomba, and bacopa. Of course there are so many more but those are just a few.

 

Thank you both! It sounds like I have a lot to learn but I think I have the tools to be successful now!

 

Swords are actually pretty hungry plants - I urge you to either get a finer substrate like sand, so you can use root tabs more effectively, or get an all-in-one liquid fertilizer like Nilocg Thrive or ThriveC. Nilocg's root tabs are also way cheaper and way more nutrient packed than store brand ones. Flourish is just too low on macros.

 

Swords are actually pretty hungry plants - I urge you to either get a finer substrate like sand, so you can use root tabs more effectively, or get an all-in-one liquid fertilizer like Nilocg Thrive or ThriveC. Nilocg's root tabs are also way cheaper and way more nutrient packed than store brand ones. Flourish is just too low on macros.

Thanks for the advice!