Anyone have any luck using all-in-one or comprehensive ferts (like APIs "Leaf Zone", Kent's "Pro Plant" or Tropica's "Plant Nutrition Liquid" among others)? There's been some sentiment lately about the PITA of individual liquid ferts (Seachem line), while very good, they are a bit of a hassle--and get expensive for larger tanks. And dry ferts can be quite intimidating...
For the lazy or new recruits, is there an easy fertilizer out there people have used and can recommend?
Would be nice to have a non-scary, easy product to recommend to people I'm trying to sway to the "green" side
Don't forget that Seachem Flourish is a comprehensive liquid too, which for low-light planted tanks can take you a long ways. Unfortunately, when you start ramping up the light and CO2, you need something more than a basic "general" fertilizers. All of the ones you listed would be used for traces (even though they do can small amount of macros) in a more advanced setup, but would still need macro supplementation.
I'm curious why dry ferts are intimidating? I agree with if you're trying to mix up liquid solutions from dry ferts based on the volume of your tank. You don't need to do that though. Dose the dry chemicals directly into your tank in small amounts, and it's actually easier than dosing the liquid ones.
All of this said, the only real way I know about for someone to run a high-light/CO2 setup without regular dosing is to setup a soil tank.
It's definitely a good discussion to have, however, to find the best formula to give to a new recruit for them to be successful.
For Dry Ferts, I find PPS Pro pretty easy. I mix the macros and micros seperately. And dosing is easy, for my 50G I would dose 5 ml of each daily, for my 10G, 1 ml of each daily. 1 ml per 10 gallons. Same mix works for all size tanks. I like Neilan's spreadsheet (PPS Pro Auto Calc) because you can make adjustments, such as more K2S04. Neilan's spreadsheet can be used for setting up an auto doser, you just set the dosage amount and mixing size to the quantity your auto doser dispenses. I bought everything to make an auto doser about a year ago and never set it up. Maybe I like doing it manually.
