Another newbie moving on from plastic to real
 

Hi there!

My tank has been up and running since November, and I think it is time for me to move on to real plants. My tank is a 25 gallon freshwater with community fish, a newly aquired Life-Glo 6700 k bulb (was using a Reptil Glo that came with the tank, but it was getting hot...), older random sword plant and moss ball, and newly aquired wisteria and money wort plants. I've also purchased some Flourish.

Is there anything that I'm missing that my current plants cannot live without?

YAY for plants! Only thing I can see your missing is a root tab for the sword, they tend to be heavy root feeders, and with out them their new leaves tend to turn translucent and fall off. Also just to make sure you got the flourish comprehensive right? not the excel?

The Flourish doesn't mention anything about being Excel. It describes it as a comprehensive supplement.

Is the Excel kind bad?

Ok thats good, the front of the bottle should say Flourish comprehensive supplement for the planted aquarium. The Flourish Excel is a carbon supplement (meant to act in place of CO2) and would not have nutrients your plants need, I've heard both bad and good things about it but the main thing is right now you have the comprehensive fertilizer, which is what your plants need.

Just wanted to make sure you grabbed the right one.

+1 on Zof, make sure you have the comprehensive bottle. If you bough the wrong stuff, hopefully you can take it back!

I definately bought the right stuff. Thanks for checking! Will I need to get the other kind at some point? I don't forsee myself doing CO2.

There is one very important thing that you are missing.... PICTURES!! :) Can't wait to see them.

if you are using the Comprehensive, that will be all you need on the liquid fertilizer side of things, if you plan to keep rooted plants, such as an amazon sword, you will need some root tabs as well

I've got to find a camera that'll work with the refraction! *steals friend's SLR...*

I concur with prior members on the Flourish and CO2.

I do not recommend Excel (a carbon supplement) as usually there will be sufficient CO2 in the aquarium from fish and biological processes. Adding Excel creates a different "level" of balance and that means adjusting light and other nutrients to that new balance level.

To be successful, plants need light and nutrients in balance, and the natural or low-tech approach that I and many other members here use makes the most use of nature without the aquarist's intervention with gadgets. There's nothing wrong with high-tech per say, but it creates a very different playing field and one that requires considerably more intervention by the aquarist. I prefer letting nature do the work and I just provide the minimum tools she needs. This means light and nutrients (balanced fertilizer like Flourish) that will likely not all be available from fish, food, etc.

Byron.