Hey, I only have a small tropical tank (34 litre) but plenty of live plants. In Palmerston I use rain water for my changes as we are on icky town water. Should I be using fertilizer to give my plants some extra nutrients?

I have java ferns which are flourishing (babies and all) as well as a java moss wall which is starting to grow through its mesh nicely. My anbulia/cabomba (could never figure out which it was lol) was growing well then packed a sad when i chopped it back a bit and replanted it (most of it refused to put down roots). Also just picked up some indian fern.

Also, when I'm home during the christmas hols I bring my tank with me, hence the small size. I can't wait to set up a HUGE planted tank one day. We are on bore water there, which is high in calcium and probably iron too with a high pH. So I use a combo of rainwater and tap water to get a nice balanced pH lol.

The rainwater here is dropping my pH to quite low, test says about 6. Should I be worried about that? Seeing as its constant and all...

Fish are bristlenoses, platies, danios and dwarf gourami.

Thanks,

Rozski

Bumping... anyone?

There are charts online that show what you need to dose depending on what your plants are doing, check one of these out and buy a fert that is high in what ever you need. If you are happy with your plants don't dose anything, otherwise it will be a waste of money and you risk putting your fert/light/CO2 out of balance which could cause algae problems.

Have you tried checking your PH at different times of the day to see if it changes? There are really two type of stability with PH, short and long term. During the day the PH will swing for a number of reasons, plants using co2, fish breathing, etc, so if you are measuring the PH at the same time it might look like it is stable (because you have long term stability) but could be swinging quite a bit during the day. FYI I have an electronic PH meter in my marine tank, this shows around 8.0 in the morning before the lights come on, and sits on 8.3 when I get home in the evening.

You don't say how many fish you have but if the plants are growing and looking healthy I wouldn't worry about fertiliser - the fish waste will be feeding the plants

Cheers

Jude

Florish is quite good. But im not sure about undergravel fertilisers.

But if you have good lighting then i wouldnt bother!

Hey thanks for the help. Will give the Ph a few tests throughout the day and see how it is. I did test it just after I did a water change with rainwater so that might have lowered it a bit. Also remembered I could chuck a little bird grit (right?) into the filter to buffer the Ph and raise it a little.

Plenty of fish in there lol, so if their wastes are feeding the plants then I won't worry about fertilising. Was just wondering if I needed to due to using rainwater. And I don't have any algae problems at the moment so yay.

Heh, my male gourami is hogging all the food again. Maybe I should tell him hes getting a pot belly... :roll:

I try not to mess around with the Ph to much, chemically that is. So i dont know if you can do much about it. cause if your water suply has a low Ph. As soon as you do a water change its going to change again. Also having a smaller tank is harder to keep the ph and ammonia levels down cause of the such small water volume. If you say 6.0 ph what seems about nutral if i remember. That sounds Fine to me. Actualy that sound quite nice depending on what your fish prefer.

rain water is quite acidic and has no kh which is why your ph would be so low. if you have no buffering (this is where the shell grit comes in) you may experience large ph fluctuations or crashes. get the LFS to check your kh if you can (no point buying a test kit if you dont need one) and if its over 3 degrees than your fine, if not a little bit of shell grit will help stability