"spiral_72" wrote in news:1109008752.449041.270760
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Well, as much as all that hurt my feelings...... You might have a
point. With the exception of my banana plant, my plant growth is slow
to almost stopped.

.......

"Now poor CO2, lack of NO3, K, traces, GH, PO4 etc sure
will............."
(NO3) Nitrates is zero. With my low fish load. it's to be expected.
Lots of people run a very low fish load planted tank. You can't dose
Nitrates. Can you? Nitrates are generated by bacteria breaking
down.....forms of organic waste.
GH is 7d(125ppm) a little on the soft side.
PO4 is very high.... that's what I am concerned with
CO2 by calculation is about 8ppm. Not too bad right?.... a little low
(K) Potassium.... I have no idea.


Hey spiral, just a quick note a fellow aquarist who had a similar
problem... Tom's is the way go to.
I've been down the limiting ferts route, especially phosphates, and it
never really worked and if it did work the plants didn't do well. Now I
actually still have little visable traces of algae around in my tank, so I
know I'm not clean and it could grow, but it just doesn't. It still took
me a little tweaking of using lots of fert and CO2 to get it working. I
have a larger than usual for a fully planted tank (at least compaired to
the pics you see on the web) so I personally use less NO3 and I vacuum my
gravel whenever I move plants from that spot. The nice thing is while you
are working on getting the balance right, even if you have algae at least
your plants are going gangbusters and that's encouraging.... that PO4 will
probably get sucked up by the plants (it's just amazing) and just disappear
unless you got a real hard PO4 source in your gravel.

I'll let Tom do the work and give you the details but I'll tell you right
now that CO2 is way way low. I'm around upper 20s to 30ppm CO2. There's a
note on most charts saying above 20 is bad but I haven't seen a hint of a
problem.

Luck, don't give up
Pete.

PS. if that banana plant is anything like mine, once you get your tank
really running it will take over. It turned into one of those giant ferns
people use in the corned of their office.. it's massive.