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when to start using ferts

Plants need light so you need to start with light on and plants need nutrients so you need to start dosing also! You dont mention CO2!
Number of hours depends on the plants you use and if CO2 vs no-Co2! I usually start my tanks on 6 hours max and go from there!
 
john6 said:
Its a non co2 tank
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There is a huge difference between a CO2 vs a non-CO2 tank. It is the same relative difference between a Formula 1 car vs a farm tractor.
Although Paulo is correct that plants need light, plants in a non-CO2 tank do not need nearly as much light as most folks seem to think.
There is a lot of confusion about this and you should be very careful about avoiding the use of excessive lighting.

When you first put your plants in the tank and fill it with water you don't really need to worry too much about light or fertilizer. If your plants are coming from a shop then typically they would have been grow as terrestrial plants and their first priority is to adapt to being dumped under water.
Because of this it requires several weeks for them to change their physiology so that they can breathe under water. In fact, gas exchange for newly submerged plants is far more important than light at this point. If you blast the plants with megawatts of light (as so many do) then it is very likely tat they will either start to melt into oblivion rather quickly or the tank will descend into algae hell straight away.

You do not need to worry about nutrition immediately. A non-CO2 tank is very low energy system and the metabolism of the plants is about 1/10th of that in a CO2 injected tank. Growth rates in ow tech tanks are by definition, limited by the poor availability of CO2 in the water, which is often less than 8ppm. Since plants are made primarily of carbon, this poor availability restricts the rate at which they can build tissue. Since the growth rate is limited then the rate at which they consume nutrients is also limited. The tank needs only small amounts of fertilizer once, or perhaps twice a week, so there is no need to fret about nutrients - but there is plenty need to worry about too much light.

Cheers,
 
Just start using ferts when you see any signs of deficiencies.
Search on the forum for "duckweed index" - it's one of the best indicators for plant hungriness, moreover - with some of the training it will lead to the best richness in color of the red plants and you can control the green hue of the plants as well (usually depending on the amount of nitrogen [NO3]).
There's absolutely no need to feed them in advance or overfeed them. Similar to humans.
Plants need to be fit, no overfeed ;)
 
ceg4048 said:
There is a huge difference between a CO2 vs a non-CO2 tank. It is the same relative difference between a Formula 1 car vs a farm tractor.
Although Paulo is correct that plants need light, plants in a non-CO2 tank do not need nearly as much light as most folks seem to think.
There is a lot of confusion about this and you should be very careful about avoiding the use of excessive lighting.

When you first put your plants in the tank and fill it with water you don't really need to worry too much about light or fertilizer. If your plants are coming from a shop then typically they would have been grow as terrestrial plants and their first priority is to adapt to being dumped under water.
Because of this it requires several weeks for them to change their physiology so that they can breathe under water. In fact, gas exchange for newly submerged plants is far more important than light at this point. If you blast the plants with megawatts of light (as so many do) then it is very likely tat they will either start to melt into oblivion rather quickly or the tank will descend into algae hell straight away.

You do not need to worry about nutrition immediately. A non-CO2 tank is very low energy system and the metabolism of the plants is about 1/10th of that in a CO2 injected tank. Growth rates in ow tech tanks are by definition, limited by the poor availability of CO2 in the water, which is often less than 8ppm. Since plants are made primarily of carbon, this poor availability restricts the rate at which they can build tissue. Since the growth rate is limited then the rate at which they consume nutrients is also limited. The tank needs only small amounts of fertilizer once, or perhaps twice a week, so there is no need to fret about nutrients - but there is plenty need to worry about too much light.

Cheers,
Click to expand...
Man I could have used this talk when I was nuking my bacopa.
 
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