Giving fertilizer to a newly planted tank.

[maverick786us]

When I was new into the hobby go Aquascape I happened to dose fertilizers, micronutrients and macronutrients to newly planted tank in less week after establishing it.
Couple of months ago when I had my first high tech tank with CO2.

I always had this question in mind, that in a newly planted tank their is excess of nutrients released from the soil that can cause fertilizer burn to the slow growing grasses that straight away came out of tissue culture and establishing its roots. We frequently change water to get rid of excess nutrients and use fast growing pants to absorb those nutrients, and yet I am using fertilizer and nutrients in that tank.

Couple of days ago I saw a Video from MJ Aquascaping in which he gave tips on dealing with algae issues. He said avoid fertilizers for 2 months.
So my question is when is the right time to give fertilizer in a newly established tank that has some fast growing stem plants as background, some epiphyte and some grasses?

 

[Connswater]

when is the right time to give fertilizer

Good question, no fixed point I suppose. I'm basically a lean dose, not EI, so I only add macro nutrients when I think they are needed, sometimes I test the Nitrate and Phosphate levels. With CO2 and high light even on good rich aquatic compost I would think stem plants might exhaust the macro nutrients in the water column quite quickly, maybe a month or two as MJ suggests. Micro nutrients, a lot depends on your tap water and water changes. Having said that, in terms of macro nutrients, sometimes in the summer my tap water has all the Nitrate my plants could ever want! I currently have little filament algae here and there so have been holding off dosing, but probably should do a water change and test the water, suspect I might have over done the Phosphate last water change.
Sorry, not a black and white answer from me. My tank is currently suffering from holiday period neglect, it needs a trim, algae taken out and a water change and maybe a feed but perhaps not Phosphate. Picture below taken today of my main tank to illustrate my situation, the tank has had no water column fertiliser for at least a fortnight but it is an established tank, but with only a little soil here and there and a few root tabs under the greedy root feeding crypts. I haven't set up a new tank in years, but last time I used soil under sand and didn't start any macro water column feeding for at least a year until I saw some deficiency signs in the floating plants. Iron I did add but in very modest amounts.
Hope that helps a bit.