Re: Tetra plant products

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: Tetra plant products
From: Stephen.Pushak at saudan_HAC.COM
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 96 15:58:03 PDT
In-Reply-To: <199604101939.PAA30801 at looney_actwin.com>; from "Aquatic-Plants-Owner at ActWin_com" at Apr 10, 96 3:39 pm
Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85]

> From: ljw at voyagerco_com (Larry West)
> 
> curious as to why the Tetra products are considered a waste of
> money? lo-tech plant tank (loam/vermiculite substrate under
> aquarium gravel, yeast CO2), seems to do well with them. At least
> Hygrophilia thinks so! I use FloraPride and the Crypto-Dunger tabs.

I had previously used TMG for a long time until I could no longer 
find a source for it. I had to switch over to Floreal and 
Ferreal by aqualine buschke (I'm probably confusing it with
Tetra FloraPride) I only used a plain gravel substrate 
at that time and the plants did very poorly. If you follow 
the dosage instructions closely, the stuff is used up 
in only a month or two. Very expensive despite the low 
unit cost (false economy!) I suspect Dupla drops and Flourish 
are the most concentrated and I get good results with
Flourish with bi-weekly doses. TMG on the other hand only
needs to be dosed at water changes; I suspect this is because
it has much better chellation ingredients. (refer recent
article on EDTA, DPTA, HEEDTA) Floreal seems to be almost
completely inadequate for Fe. I seem to recall other people
having negative comments about Tetra fertilizers but there
are too many tetras in the old lists for grep to find the
right ones. I think I recall it was only available in very
small bottles at a fairly high price.

I expect part of the reason things are working well for you
is the soil may be supplying Fe (for the moment; it gets used
up I think). K & N may not be in short supply.

> am I poisoning my plants and/or fish by using this
> stuff, or are there different and/or better products out
> there?

Not poisoning but perhaps you could get better economy
and improve the growth and appearance of red plants and
difficult plants with a more balanced mix. Just my opinion ;-)
Let's see what the other folks have to say. Several folks
have made negative comments about brand X fertilizers
(the recently shocked and now revitalized George has made
"disparaging" comments about Flourish but I'll excuse him ;-)

Steve "I use Flourish but wish I could afford TMG" in Vancouver!
(but still wishing for chemicals to boost N & K to drop
my phosphates as per the kc & ps treatise)