# Esha cryptoplus



## Vince (11 May 2011)

Dear all,

I was actually just wondering if anyone has some experience with Esha cryptoplus. Apparently it prevents crypts to melt or getting holes in their leafs. And it makes your crypts look more beautiful and vital.....And you can use it as a medicine using a special treatment when your crypts did actually melt. In other words it must be great! Although one of those typical esha bottles is only good for a treatment of 800L!!!! Expensive!!!!. But if it really works I definitely want to try it as I was inspired by this: http://87.117.224.40/~ukaps/forum/viewt ... =49&t=1914 . I made my new setup using only crypto's and it does look great but now I'm worried all the time that the whole tank will melt  . 

So.... being not exceptionally experienced in plants its only after I made my crypto scape I realised the plants are supposed to be quite difficult. Atm everything seems to do fine, but i have this setup now for like 1 week. No melt so far. Some spes: 

Juwel 180 (I can't stand the look of the inside filter so I always rip it out)
Eheim professionel 3 2073
Substrate = JBL Manado
I added under the roots of each plant 1 HS terracap (clay)
Adding daily easylife easy-carbo
Adding once a week but I tend to change to daily easylife profito
I have two t5 tl's one daylight and on the back 1 color (of juwel)

I thinks thats all that could have anything to do with the whater. 

Anything I could except of adding co2 to make my crypts flourish???


Thanks


Vince (from the Netherlands so I hope my English is understandable   )


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## ceg4048 (11 May 2011)

Hi,
   This is another snake oil and I suggest you avoid throwing away your hard earned €s.

Holes in leaves and melting crypts occur when CO2 is poor and/or lighting is too intense. Avoid these scenarios and you will avoid melting and holes.

If you want your crypts to look better then feed them better with NPK and trace elements, which is basically what that product contains in very small and uneconomical concentrations.

Cheers,


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## Vince (11 May 2011)

Thanks for your reaction, I was already afraid it would be some kind of...snake oil you say  (learned something new)!
I didn't buy it because I wanted to hear some info of the experts.
But do you think easylife profito and clay is sufficiënt? 
Vince


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## ceg4048 (11 May 2011)

Hi Vince,
               Apologies for using an an unfamiliar expression. Your English is so good I neglected to read the part where you mention that you are from Holland!  

A brief history of snake oil:
The Ancient Chinese extracted oils and other products from the local water snakes captured in rice paddies and other waterways. These oils are high in omega-3 fatty acids. This type of fatty acid has been shown to have the ability to lower inflammation, and as a result, in traditional Chinese medicines, snake oil products were sold for the relief of joint pain. 





When the Chinese immigrants came to America to build the rail-roads they brought their medicines with them, but of course, the locals ridiculed these products, especially since they competed with local "high tech" medicines, which were thought to be more advanced and effective (but which ironically, were actually less effective.)

In the American West (California and neighbouring territories) the expression "snake oil" later became associated with fraudulent products that were ineffective and which were the mainstay of con artists.




Cheers,


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## Vince (11 May 2011)

Cool explanation tyvm.


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## Vince (11 May 2011)

I just tested my water:

Ph=7.5
Kh=5
Gh=22 (omg probably because I use Manado  )
No2=0

I don't have any more drops to test No3 unfortunately. 

Is this ok for crypts or is it hard and should it be more acidic?

Vince


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## CeeJay (11 May 2011)

Hi Vince


			
				Vince said:
			
		

> Is this ok for crypts or is it hard and should it be more acidic?


This will be fine for your Crypts. I have a tank full of them and I didn't have any melt at the start, and they're in hard London tap water. See here Beyond (I must get round to updating this as it is well grown in now   ),


			
				Vince said:
			
		

> So.... being not exceptionally experienced in plants its only after I made my crypto scape I realised the plants are supposed to be quite difficult. Atm everything seems to do fine, but i have this setup now for like 1 week. No melt so far.


This is not so. Crypts are one of the easiest, lowest maintenance plants I've ever grown. They are relatively slow growing (even in my Rio 180), so I only have to trim now and again. I love them for that   .

Oh, and be warned, you will be advised to dump your test kits by Clive (aka ceg4048)  ,  and that man knows his stuff.


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## Vince (12 May 2011)

I'm glad to hear the water is ok. I have been reading some stuff on this forum recently and I noticed Clive's amazing knowledge.... . 
Something I read for example is that TPN+ is supposed to be the best fertilizer except of the home-made ones. But when i type this at google I can't find this product. As I'm using atm profito which lacks N and P maybe I should use a different fert....


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## ceg4048 (12 May 2011)

Hi Vince,
Do yourself a favor and stop testing. In the first place, none of the measurements you just listed have anything to do with plant health, so you are simply wasting your money buying all of those silly toys. I simply don't understand why everyone is so hysterical about high GH, and all of this Manado bashing because it _supposedly_ increases GH is a complete waste of time. Who cares if raises the GH? Just carry on. Neither plants not fish pay any attention to GH or pH.

Here are crypts growing at a GH of 25+ (the reason I put the "+" is because I used up all of the GH test reagent and the color in the vial wouldn't change, so I stopped counting. I even added more GH via a product called GH Booster just to see how far I could push the GH before plants would fail. I ran out of GH booster.




Here is the rest of the tank at high GH. Do any of these plants look remotely as if they are suffering from high GH? Can anyone even describe what high GH toxicity actually looks like? Have you ever seen any data that shows how much better plants in soft acidic water tanks look or grow when directly compared to identical plants in a hard water tank? All of this is blind speculation and fantasy. I see just as many lousy and rotted plants in soft water tanks as I do in hard water tanks. The problems are identical: CO2 and nutrient starvation that causes the plant's biological infrastructure to collapse, which then triggers algal blooms and loss of tissue. The type of water the plant is in at the time of failure never matters because it's always the fault of the hobbyists when these problems occur. And the fault occurs because that hobbyist is always more preoccupied with soft water and low/stable pH, or GH, and never bothers to think about these much more important factors, and so fails to adjust his/her technique to optimize the conditions in the tank for plant health.
The more you worry about GH and pH the more problems you will have.
Instead, you need to worry about whether you are performing large and frequent water changes. You need to worry about whether you have enough flow and whether that flow is being evenly distributed across the plant beds. You need to worry about whether you are feeding the plants enough NPK+Trace elements. And finally, you need to worry about whether you are adding enough Easy Carbo (or gaseous CO2) for the amount of plant mass and lighting sitting over the tank. These are absolutely the only things that matter for the nearly 300 plant species we grow.
That's why your test kits will tell you nothing, because they cannot answer these important questions, and furthermore, nothing that they _do_ tell you will be of any use or relevance in growing excellent plants.




FYI TPN+ has been renamed Tropica Master Grow (TMG+)

Cheers,


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## Vince (12 May 2011)

Ok  and me thinking all the time growing plants is extremely difficult. 

So i'm now using easycarbo, profito and the clay tabs, but despite this I notice on nearly each leaf of the c. wenditii tiny yellow spots underneath the leaf. Probably it's normal (they have to adapt) or should I do something......


Vince


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## ceg4048 (13 May 2011)

Well, I would just dose the NPK and trace powders regularly and monitor the situation. If you are only dosing once a week, and if you are not using an all-in-one fertilizer then you will have trouble, so you need to sort that out first.

Cheers,


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## Vince (13 May 2011)

I think every thing seems to be stable atm and I see quite a lot of new leaves already..... Today I'm also getting some nice group of Celestichthys margaritatus..... looking forward to the moment they can swim freely in my tank. 
I have bought some capsules from Ferka called Stemma. It's specially designed for Crypts but more important its a NPK fert. So I can stick with proficto untill i'm out of it and add the capsules as a suplement.


Vince

p.s. Pictures will follow soon but in a different topic ofc. I'm still waiting for my c. balansae


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## CeeJay (13 May 2011)

Hi Vince 

On your journey into the planted tank world you will hear all sorts of manufacturers garbage


			
				Vince said:
			
		

> It's specially designed for Crypts


This being one of them   

You need NPK and Trace end of story


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## Vince (14 May 2011)

Hey,

I'm starting to learn how to filter the "snake oil" from the things that do matter. In this case I bought this product because its NPK and trace. Now I could choose the "normal"capsules and these ones. Exactly the same but specially designed for crypts. Both products were equally expensive, so I wonder, what would you have chosen? Either it will work extra well or just normal  .

I'm starting to learn quite some things already on this forum one of them: questions are free, the products aren't. That's why I asked about the Esha product in the first place .

I just wish I had found out about this forum before I started with my aquarium setup. 

Vince


p.s. I think I will close this topic here and go on with a new topic in Journal tanks


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