nutrients for plants

[Kristin]

We have a barebottom tank and just added a couple of plants. We have a lutea and a green wendtii. I have them in pots with a fine gravel. I want them to grow nice and strong...does anyone have any suggestions on what i can put in the pots to help the plants grow without harming my water?
Thanks for your help
Kristin

[Kristin]

also what is a co2 pump, do i need one? I am new at plants and am not sure. I have two air stones running in my tank right now

[MickYoumans]

I don't think you are suppose to use gaseous CO2 in a discus tank. I use Seachem Flourish Excel instead (one cap full per day per 50 gallons). It is a liquid form of carbon for your plants. I also use Tropica Aquacare liquid fertilizer at 20mL once a week. I have a nice variety of low light plants and they are doing fine on 10-12 hours of low light (< 1 watt per gallon) per day and the above liquid additives. Hope this helps!

[Apistomaster]

Gaseous Co2 is exactly what one should use. But CO2 injection is only useful in heavily planted tanks using high intensity lighting. Plants get all the CO2 they need from the atmosphere and fish under low light conditions(~1 to 1-1/2 watts per gal.)

For potted plant in bare bottom tanks it is better to use a timed release fertilizer inside the pot buried in the potting substrate. This method delivers the fertilizer where it is needed. Since we normally change so much water in Discus tanks just adding liquid fertilizer is much like pouring it down the drain.
I use 2 brands of fertilizer. Both are good but my favorite is NutriFin PlantGro sticks.
Plantgrow is compressed fertilizer inside perforated pointed plastic spikes.

The other one I use sometimes is Azoo Aquarium Plant fertilizer. It is a marble sized fertilzer compressed in to a hard clay ball.

SeaChem Flourish Tabs are also very good.

[nickmcmechan]

there is some confusion surrounding injected co2 in discus tanks

my assumption is that this is because the tanks are run at high temp and therfore have lower 02 - if we then push stocking boundaries, despite daily water changes, there becomes a danger of lowering the available o2 too much

if the tank is correctly stocked, there is some surface ripple (not agitation), has correct lighting (2wpg+) and is very heavily planted (>75% substrate not visible) then co2 injection is absolutely the best method

this is not true in your case.

for the plants you are doing i would just stick a root tab in each pot once a month

[KDodds]

For just a couple of plants in pots, a whole CO2 set-up is going WAY overboard, wouldn't you say? You can get plant fert tabs from many sources, cheapest I found is aquariumplants.com, 75 tabs for $10. One tab once every month to season, depending on growth, will be fine. There will be plenty of carbon available for simply two plants, so I would not worry about dosing carbon, liquid or otherwise. For what you seem to be trying to do, hands off methods seem like the best approach. Just leave the plants to grow, remembering that if the roots grow beyond the pot, it's time to "pot up". You can use pond soil in lieu of the cigarette butt filter stuff they use in commercial pots. Works very well.