plants not growing

[PB1212BBA at aol_com]

To Barry Cooper, Edd Kray, Bill Martin and anyone else who may be interested. 
First, sorry about answering such old posts, but I haven't yet got caught up 
with my e-mail after moving. I used to never have good luck with plants. If 
they didn't die within a week the best I could do was to keep them green, but 
they would not grow. Then about a year ago I was asking Karen Randall on 
another list about the DIY CO2 reactor. During the conversation, someone else 
asked about their snails' shells dissolving. Karen replied that a lot of 
plants may pull iron and calcium out of the water quicker than the snails can 
use it and suggested using supplements. She also stated that fluoride may be 
deadly to snails. 
       This hit me like a bolt of lightning - I am a water plant operator and 
the main thing that we remove from water is iron (because it stains clothes 
and keeps soap from sudsing up) but plants NEED iron. We also add fluoride to 
the water. Since I started adding iron to my tanks I grow plants very well 
regardless of whether I add CO2 or not. Even with the poor lighting in most 
small hoods, the plants still grow well with the iron additions.
       Any LFS that has marine fish should have Kent Marine products and one 
of their products is an iron supplement. Since I don't have a test kit for 
iron, I use this at half strength with good results. If you can't find this 
at a local shop, you could probably use regular garden iron (available at 
home improvement shops and garden centers) at a VERY dilute solution (which 
is probably what the Kent Marine stuff is anyway).
       I feel that fish need iron too, so even the softer water killies 
should not have a problem with trace amounts added at water change time, but 
I would try it on the less expensive killies first just to be safe. My discus 
seem to have no problems at all with this and enjoy the nice plant growth.
       Hope you have better results with the plants in the future.
       Richard Arline   pb1212bba at aol_com
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