Why you should fertilize your aquarium

What about looking at an aquarium with colorful fishes that swim among luxuriant water
plants? In this case, you would appreciate the explosion of different color shades that move
in synchrony cradled by the water flow.

Who would not like the idea of having a fish tank like that?

As well as giving an undeniable aesthetic effect, plants carry out many essential functions for
the management of our fresh-water tanks. Plants can be visual barriers and shelters. As visual barriers, they host fishes stressed by the exaggerated attentions of territorial species. As shelters, plants provide a nursery space for the first hours of fishes and shrimps.

However, the most important function provided by plants is the one linked to the control of pollutants.

In order to understand how plants can help us for the management of nitrates and
phosphates produced by the metabolism of fishes, we have to take a step back, figuring out
how plants absorb nutrients.

A step back: how do plants absorb nutrients?

The growth and health of plants strictly depend on the substances that plants come in contact with, such as water, carbon dioxide, light and the availability of essential nutritive elements. An element is defined as essential when its absence forbids the completion of the biological cycle of a plant.

On the base of their concentration into the vegetable tissues, the essential elements are divided into macronutrients and micronutrients.

Macronutrients (such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, potassium and chlorine) have higher concentrations, while micronutrients (such as iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron and many more) generally have lower concentrations of over 10 times.

Unlike the terrestrial plants that have the soil as the main source of nutrients, the aquatic ones successfully extract from the water the largest amount of substances that they need.

And that is the point of this article. As fishes are, also the plants of the aquarium are living beings and they need to feed. However, the rules through which plants feed are different from those that regulate the absorption of food by animals.

First of all the elements have to be available, which means that they have to be taken by plants and metabolized in the tissues. If the plants of our aquarium are lack of iron we cannot add a bolt into the tank. The iron that is in the bolt is not available to be absorbed. The same applies to the other macroelements and microelements.

Moreover, it has to be taken into consideration that plants nourish following the “Liebig’s Law”, known also as “The Law of the Minimum”, according to which the amount of absorbed nutrients levels off basing on the element of which there is less availability. On the basis of this principle, in the aquarium we could have high levels of nitrates and phosphates and a good light but, at the same time, a scarce concentration of carbon dioxide. In this way, plants would grow slowly anyway, favoring the expansion of algae species more tolerant to these kinds of imbalances.

In addition to this, the absorption of nutrients and their availability are not stable over time, but are related to some chemical-physical characteristics such as the temperature of water, light condition, hardness and pH of water, other than the development phase of the plant itself.

In general, we can say that to support plants through their growth we need to offer them the elements that they require, just as we do to the fishes of our aquaria.

Here’s how to provide plants with all the nutrients they need

In light of what said so far, we show a guideline to add plants to the aquarium in the best conditions possible.

If we are not too skilled or we do not want to make things too complicated through the choice of stratified bottoms, we can use inert bottom adding Amra Flora Complex Caps in the areas in which plants with an important root system such as Cryptocoryne will be located.

For what concerns the choice of water, for their process of absorption the largest part of plants needs a hardness of water between 4 and 6 points of pH and generally a neutral or slightly acid pH. Regarding the management of water change or other matters we have already written about that here, in the article about the water of the aquarium.

According to the light of the tank, we can choose plants more or less demanding, but if we want to look at our plants at their maximum splendor we suggest to integrate carbon dioxide into our fish tank. Carbon dioxide (together with light and water) is the base element in the process of photosynthesis and so it gives the plant the bricks to its growth. In order to maintain the levels of supply stable, we suggest a system equipped with a disposable cylinder such as Amtra CO2 System.

In conclusion, it is important to provide the fish tank with microelements and macroelements
that are needed. According to the aquarium’s necessities there will be needed some liquid
fertilizers such as Amtra Flora X and Amtra Flora Y in order to help us in the perfect
balancing of the nutrients for our aquarium.