When you run out of Seachem Stability you dont have to buy another bottle, buy a nice plant you like instead or save your money
🙂
The jury is very much still out on wether or not bacterial supplements work, but I personally find it unlikely that they would contain the right species of germs that match exactly the natural balance a tank gets on its own. Scientists didnt know hardly anything about the germs that inhabit our tank until very recently, and I ask myself how the companies could have figured it out before them.
I cant tell you if you should stop using it or not, I dont think its actively harmful, maybe
@dw1305 has an opinion on it.
A lot of people use these bacteria products and their tanks all find balance, so I think the biggest effect will be on the wallet.
Prime is good, keep using that. Not because it is particularly magical or anything but it does its job well and it is concentrated, so it is much more economic to use than AquaSafe and some other brands.
APT Complete fertilizer is a complete fertilizer, which is good.
That sentence may sound a bit silly but there are several fertilizers on the market sold as "All you need", when they contain no Nitrate or Phosphate!
Both of these are very important for plant growth and must be supplied, one way or another.
In APT Complete, the ratio of Nitrate to other nutrients is a bit lower than in Estimative Index (EI) fertilizer.
This ratio is to bring out extra red in some plants like Rotala, which is done by carefully and slightly starving the plant of Nitrate.
Starve them too much and they wont grow.
The only reason I write this is so that you are the most informed of what is going into your tank.
It will hopefully help you to troubleshoot any issues you might have down the road, and I hope it doesnt sound too scary right now
🙂
It can be useful to know that you may be running a bit lean on nitrate if the plants that dont have access to the soil starts having any symptoms.
Dont worry about it for now though, your tank is currently chock full of nutrients seeping out from all your fresh soil, so much so that you need to perform water changes to make sure it doesnt overwhelm the plants
🙂
Later on you can use the duckweed index to determine if you need a bit more nitrate.
If the floaters get plenty of light but remain quite small it means that they could be a bit hungry, and you'll know what you can try first
Dont kick yourself for any purchases you have made, there is a whole wild jungle out there of ferts and products, and each one claims to be the absolute bees knees and essential to have. Navigating it all as a newbie is an impossible task.
You have probably also noticed that sometimes you will get conflicting advice on this forum. I dont have a good solution for this, although it gets easier to navigate the advice as you gain more knowledge. Everyone has their own experience, opinion and view on what works for them. Sometimes its possible to take the average of the replies and go with that. Or the majority vote. I usually try to find a few people that seem very knowledgeable, and listen to how they do things. It also helps if they run their tank in the same style as you. I have found that high tech advice doesnt always translate well into low tech. Post count below their profile image can help sometimes to narrow it down, but cant be relied upon absolutely.
Lastly I like to go with what makes sense to me and prefer posts backed by science, like Darrels posts often do.
Although sometimes they just make me dizzy 😄
Im not sure where im going with this any more so I shall leave it at that 😁
If anything I have written is unclear, please let me know and I will try to elaborate.
