Ocean Nutrition Fertil+ vs Seachem Fluorish

[Glank27]

Hi,
I have a 240ltr planted tank with a non-Co2 set-up. Lighting is 2x 54W T5s, and Aquamedic Volcanit substrate.
I currently dose Seachem Fluorish as a liquid fert fortnightly.
Plants in are Vallisneria Asiatica, Echinodorus Bleheri, and crypto species. Coming up is a group of Pogotemon Helferi.
Plants are quite healthy, although their growth is very slow.

As i am now aware that with the Seachem Fluorish i might not be dosing a complete nutrient supply (not enough iron, and macro elements), i checked what else is needed in the Seachem range in order to make a complete dosage. Infact Seachem produce Seachem Fluorish Iron as extra iron additive, Fluorish Potassium, Fluorish Phosphorus and Fluorish Nitrogen as macro nutrition. This seems to be quite expensive as this means 5 products.
Meanwhile, Ocean Nutrition offer the Fertil+ as micro nutrition, Trace+ as macro and iron+ as extra iron additive. The Ocean Nutrition might sound less expensive, but checking both websites the seachem range seem to be packed up with more ingredients.

From experienced guys here, which is the best go?

 

[ceg4048]

Hi,
Buying any of these products means spending about 100X more than you need to. A non-CO2 tank needs only very small NPK dosages, especially if your tap water has NPK in it. All you really need to do is to buy a couple of the raw ingredients and dose once a week or once every two weeks. Have a look at JamesC's Dosing Methods just to get an idea of what products are needed, many of which you can get from most of our sponsors or even from ebay if you're a real cheapskate. The dosing methods explained are more for CO2 injected tanks but you can use the same powders on a much lower scale.

I think the links in this recent thread still work: cheap ferts ebay

There is a simple and effective non-CO2 dosing formula using these powders at the end of this short thread: Algae ID


Cheers,

 

[GreenNeedle]

Just as Ceg says. I was dosing only the EI macro mix monthly or bi monthly on my non CO2. no water changes etc.

Depends on your plants and also stocking though.

Heavily planted fast growers will eat up the natural NPK whereas just anubias, crypts, ferns etc may need minimal supplements.

Heavy fish stocking will add more natural fert in (as well as the additional food) so of course that also means less supplements.

The fish become part of the method really

AC