Re: [APD] sword root tabs -- or- Poking at substrates

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

All kidding aside. Sure you can muck about in the substrate if you want; of the seven methods of aquatic gardening, two of them rely on substrate fertilizing.
 
My point was only that there's really no need to do so and I thought it was kind of an old fashioned approach to aquatic gardening, borne of the terrestrial methods and raised on the mistaken trepidation that ferts in the water column are best avoided.
 
"Ground" fertilizing makes sense for terrestrial plants; it's hard to feed them adequately through the leaves. So, it makes sense to put ferts in the soil for land plants. For dirt underlayment tank, where one is trying to avoid having to dose ferts again and again, tabs don't make much sense and in the cases with a dirt underlayment tank where you do have a need to add more nutrients, then it might be better to add straight to the water column that go disturbing the substrate with that dirt underneath it.

Feeding through the leaves is not difficult with submerged aquatic plants. And as Tom, for one example, has said again and again, it's not as if nutrients themselves are going to cause algae just because they are in the water column.

Tarah Nyberg gave a fun, literally hands-on, and interesting talk at one of the aquatic plant conventions on how to make your own fertilizer balls.  It's easy although a little time consuming and fun the first fifteen minutes or so. Prepackaged tabs save some of the work but tend, ime, to an expensive way to avoid putting ferts directly in the water column where they do no harm in a healthy tank but feed the plants just as well as ferts placed in the substrate.

sh
----- Original Message ----
From: S. Hieber <shieber at yahoo_com>
To: aquatic plants digest <aquatic-plants at actwin_com>
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 6:53:36 PM
Subject: Re: [APD] sword root tabs


Well, sometimes the hobby advances, and sometimes they try to clear inventory. 

Thre's a big diff between poking tablets in substrate and having a dirt underlayment. One of the points of the dirt underlayment, as outlined by Diana, is to provide the nutirents when you set up so you don't have to keep dsoing -- although, Diana said at AGA2K4 that she does add ferts for swords.

sh

----- Original Message ----
From: Aqua Botanic <aquabotanic at qwest_net>
To: aquatic-plants at actwin_com
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 6:38:46 PM
Subject: Re: [APD] sword root tabs


<<I haven't used root tabs in years although I hear they are still sold.
Just throw ferts in the water.<<

LOL, Scott, you really crack me up sometimes.
_______________________________________________
Aquatic-Plants mailing list
Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo/aquatic-plants