[APD] Nitrogen suppliment (lot of questions)

[Dmitri Priimak <priimak at stanford_edu>]

Hi All.

   I am very much new to this hobby, so please bear with me.
I believe that my aquarium went through initial cycle. I have very 
little fish in it, though American-Flag fish, of which I have three,
are ferocious eaters and basically eat non-stop (they eat hair algae by 
the way) and produce a lot of waste. Still, my aquarium developed green 
water at which point my tests for NO2 and NO3 showed absolutely zero as 
far as I can tell. It is my understanding that the plants as well as 
algae (am I right about algae eating nitrogen?) ate all nitrogen.
I also have about 5 watts per gallon of light and do CO2 fertilization 
with the yeast bottle. According to pH and dKH graphs I easily bring CO2 
to 20-30 ppm. My KH right now is 4dKH. By the way condition of my amazon 
swords with few yellowish spots, which are getting bigger indicate, I 
believe, luck of nitrogen. As you can guess I am trying to get rid of 
green water. I am trying to do it without radical methods, like chemical 
treatment, diatom filtration and alike, and do it by changing nutrient 
content in the water and substrate.

   Thus I'd like to supply additional nitrogen to a higher plants only, 
which means adding something to a substrate. One person suggested me to 
add small pieces of Miracle-Gr sticks, however it did not sound too good 
to me and I understand that it is not preferred by many growers of 
terrestrial plants at all, let along for aquatic plants.

   Another person suggested Nutrafin Plant-Gro sticks, but its chemical 
description appear to me to have rather large content of pretty much 
everything: Total N - 16%, P2O5 - 9%, K20 12% etc. (all by weight). 
Also, label claim that each stick last one year which I guess explains 
large quantities of chemicals in it, but I have concern that it could 
relatively quickly leak into the water column. Are my worries founded 
regarding this product?

   Some growers of terrestrial plants suggested me to use organic 
granular products (don't remember brand name) of which some contain as 
active ingredient only nitrogen, though it was not clear from the label 
in which form nitrogen is present there. Do you think this would work?

--
Dmitri Priimak

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