Plant nutrition in a discus tank

[Disgirl]

I now have all live plants on wood, with 1/2-1" pool sand in my discus tank. The plants are all different types of anubias, attached to driftwood. No roots in the sand. I wonder how the plants will get enough "food" from the water which is constantly being changed out. A few leaves are looking a bit yellow and not dark green like they should be. Do I need to add ferts to the water and if so, how much and how often? All my plant growing before has been with roots in the gravel and less frequent wc's and many more fish per gal. Advice please?
Barb

[discuspaul]

Hi Barb,
How often & how large are your w/c's ?.
With anubias & the like, you will need to dose with liquid ferts on a regular basis - suggest Flourish Comprehensive & Excel.
If you're doing large daily w/c's, much of the fert effectiveness will be lost, however.
I do 50% w/c's 3 X / week, & dose every 2nd or 3rd day as above, with good results. Anubias are doing fine. I have other planted pieces as well, and they are fed mainly with root tabs.
Hope this helps.

[Disgirl]

Thanks for the info dp. I do 50% every 3 days. Looks like I need to start a feeding program :)
Barb

[diveshooter]

Liquid ferts will do the trick, but if you are dosing a large tank the cost will add up quickly. Check out the dry ferts package from Grennleaf Aqauriums.com;http://www.greenleafaquariums.com/aquarium-fertilizers-supplements/micro-macro-fertilizers.html

[Disgirl]

Thanks ds! My tank is 125 gal and I change 60 gal every 72 hrs. Fish are completely healthy, water is great, I just hate to put anything into the tank other than food and clean water.
Barb:)

[pcsb23]

Generally speaking yellowing leaves is a sign of iron deficiency. Dosing a well balanced complete trace fert will help.

[waj8]

Anubias are slow growers so wouldn't need much in the way of ferts. You could go broke buying premixed fertilizer with your water change schedule though. I would add some micronutrient fertilizer with every water change or even better daily. I pretty much do the same as you for water changes these days. Try 2 tsps. of chelated micronutrients in 500 ml of water and add maybe 5 ml of that daily. For macronutrients its hard to tell without Nitrate and Phosphate test kits. Your fish may be providing quite a bit or maybe not. I keep my Nitrate at 5-10 ppm and my Phosphate at around 1 ppm. Potassium is added proportional to the Nitrate. You may not need to add any macros. To some degree planted tanks have different goals than Discus only tanks. Discus probably prefer 0 Nitrates but plants sure don't. You kind of have to choose a strategy somewhere between the two extremes. Maybe 2 or 3 ppm Nitrate will work. Yellow leaves could be a lack of light too. You need like 100 watts of light to hit the minimum light level. Maybe more.

[Disgirl]

Thanks Paul and Wayne. Just the kind of info. I was looking for. My graveled, fully planted angelfish tank is growing just great. But the discus tank is a whole different ballgame I am finding out. Fish great, plants not so. But I will keep at it, live plants are so much better looking than plastic :D
Barb