AverageWhiteBloke
Member
Has anyone tried making root tab pellets out of dry ferts? The addition of tabs has vastly improved my big Amazons I have plenty of dry ferts and I'm sure I've seen it done somewhere.
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Making pellets
- Thread starter AverageWhiteBloke
- Start date
Dave Spencer
Member
Do you dose the water column with dry ferts, or has adding ferts at the roots additional to water column dosing brought on the improvement?
What you could do is mix the ferts with a little water to make ice cubes.
Dave.
What you could do is mix the ferts with a little water to make ice cubes.
Dave.
Garuf
Member
Tom Barr recently suggested doing this by freezing osmacote and some other (you'll have to search the thread I couldn't find it) etc and then pushing it into the substrate where needed. Seems too easy.
AverageWhiteBloke
Member
I dose the column but was getting poor results with the Amazons so added tabs as well which gave much better results. I first used Sera tablets which included nitrate and phosphate then tried Tetra Crypto which was just Micros purely because the LFS no longer had the Sera ones. These gave differing results, the Sera would make leaves shoot fast but were a very light green and a bit veiny and the Tetra after using it for a month seems to give slower growth but deeper green fuller leaves.
I just wondered about the pellets because years ago when there wasn't many suppliers of dry ferts in the UK I stocked up from the USA and I can remember there was something on their site about making tabs from the powders, can't for the life of me remember who it was something to do with leaves though :?
Hi all,
Just weigh out the dry nutrients to give you the NPK ppm you want, take a handful of clay soil (I get it from the garden but if you have a look at when they are digging up gas mains etc you can collect enough to keep your self going for years) and mix them together. Roll the nutrient into a sheet (I use a rolling pin) , cut into squares of about the size you want and roll into pellets. You can then either leave them on a sunny window-sill for a few days or bake them in the oven on gas mark 1.
Once the pellets are thoroughly dry, they take at least 30 minutes to crumble in the tank water allowing you to poke them into the substrate etc. without making a mess. I make a large batch and then just store them in a coffee jar, as long as they are fully dry they keeep indefinitely. I use them for the house plants as well.
Because I want slow release I usually use "Vitax Q4" rather than Osmocote or dry powders, because I can buy 25kg and it works out a lot cheaper (I have thousands of potted plants, if I had fewer I would use Osmocote).
http://www.vitax.co.uk/index.php/area/home-garden/plant-feeding/vitax-q4/
cheers Darrel
Just weigh out the dry nutrients to give you the NPK ppm you want, take a handful of clay soil (I get it from the garden but if you have a look at when they are digging up gas mains etc you can collect enough to keep your self going for years) and mix them together. Roll the nutrient into a sheet (I use a rolling pin) , cut into squares of about the size you want and roll into pellets. You can then either leave them on a sunny window-sill for a few days or bake them in the oven on gas mark 1.
Once the pellets are thoroughly dry, they take at least 30 minutes to crumble in the tank water allowing you to poke them into the substrate etc. without making a mess. I make a large batch and then just store them in a coffee jar, as long as they are fully dry they keeep indefinitely. I use them for the house plants as well.
Because I want slow release I usually use "Vitax Q4" rather than Osmocote or dry powders, because I can buy 25kg and it works out a lot cheaper (I have thousands of potted plants, if I had fewer I would use Osmocote).
http://www.vitax.co.uk/index.php/area/home-garden/plant-feeding/vitax-q4/
cheers Darrel
AverageWhiteBloke
Member
Thanks for the advice looking at Osmocote it hardly seems worth the while making any with dry powders. A discus breeder I know uses them now I have seen the picture or something similar his were cone shaped but made up of little balls like them, he reckons they're his secret weapon 
I'll have a look round some garden centres next time I'm in.
You can also buy pottery clay for £7 for ten kilogram which may be safer than stuff from the garden especially if weed killers etc have been used. Even if you haven't maybe next door has and there's nasties in the soil, just a thought.
I think I'll go down the Osmocote road though as you have tried and tested them in your tank, I was a bit worried about garden centre soil type fertilisers in case they had some binding agents in them that may be toxic to fish as they are intended for the garden.
I'll have a look round some garden centres next time I'm in.You can also buy pottery clay for £7 for ten kilogram which may be safer than stuff from the garden especially if weed killers etc have been used. Even if you haven't maybe next door has and there's nasties in the soil, just a thought.
I think I'll go down the Osmocote road though as you have tried and tested them in your tank, I was a bit worried about garden centre soil type fertilisers in case they had some binding agents in them that may be toxic to fish as they are intended for the garden.
