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Plant Fertilizer This section contains information on macro and micro-nutrients. (CO2 is discussed elsewhere. For related information on nitrates and other chemistry, see also the general chemistry section.

Poor Man's Dosing Drops (PMDD)

• The Sears-Conlin Paper, a set of experiments on plant and algae response to different nutrients (also includes the infamous PMDD recipe).
• Dosing, Sources for PMDD, a practical companion by Tim Mullins
• Early comments on this paper.
• Later information.

General

• Discussions on nitrate vs. ammonia uptake rates for various plants,
• A chart showing symptoms of nutrient deficiencies.
• The macronutrients: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (aka, N, P and K).
• Neil Frank's draft on dosing and concentration.
• Roger Miller experiments with composting his aquatic plants and using them as fish food.
• Water changes to replenish natural trace elements.

Soil and Substrate Fertilizers

	An introduction to substrate by Karen Randall
	Steve Pushak has a big hyper-treatise on substrates on his site.
	Dr. Dave's take on the function of roots, anaerobic substrates, and the like.
	An article on gravel and sand size numbers by Harold Walters
	Some discussions on types of sand and gravel
	Substrate is alive in the wild!
	Jim Kelly did extensive chemical research on substrates (as well as several followup articles).
	substrate additive discussions
	An attempt at quantitative comparison of substrates leads to a heated debate on the APD.
	Some great physical analysis of popular substrates (including soil, Flourite, cat litter, Turface and gravel) by Jamie Johnson seems to point out Kitty Litter being a good substrate, but doesn't spark any debate on the APD.
	Some high-content discussions from APD specifically on laterite.
	Schoeler Enterprises sells laterite (there has been much buzz about this with Dupla's recent drop of its North American distributor). Their website is gone, though.
	Paul Krombholz describes his "Soil Soup".
	Cat Litter: merit discussion, and cloudiness comparison of several brands
	Seachem's Flourite and Onyx substrate.
	Profile/Turface.
	ADA's substrates (Power Sand, Aqua Soil, etc.)
	Peat

Trace Element Fertilizer

Someday I will organize the usenet fertilizer discussions into a coherent set. For now, read them as a huge random jumble. See also the section on PMDD at the top of this page, if you'd like to homebrew. Some breakout articles include:

• George Booth's sneaky spectrographic analysis of Duplaplant-24 and Duplaplant Tablets
• Neil Frank's similar breakdown of Delaware Aquatic's tablets
• The full contents of Tropica Mastergrow (obtained completely above board from Claus Christensen himself)
• Neil also compares relative concentrations of various fertilizers.
• Shawn Keslar finally gives us some hard data concerning activated carbon's effect on trace elements.
• Seachem's Flourish, plus a large side discussion with a Seachem chemist on Iron gluconate, the primary chelator used in Flourish.
• Some not-so-effective water additives. Beware!

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