Make your own aquarium plant fertilizer balls!

Nothing enhances the look of a room more than a well decorated planted tank. Aquarium plants have the ability to absorb nutritive elements from both the water column and the root system. It depends mainly on the type of plant that in which way it will absorb nutrition. Some aquarium plants are heavy root feeders such as Vallisneria (Val), Cryptocoryne (Crypt) and other sword species of plants. Aquarium owners who have a lot of root feeding plants, or wishes to grow these type of plants, should think of investing on aquarium plant fertilizers. Aquarium fertilizers supplement the aquarium substrate with nutritive elements. Click here to know more about aquarium plant fertilizers.

For supplementing fertilizers to the roots of the plants, there are manufactured root tabs. These root tabs directly passes nutritive elements to the root system of the plants. Some experienced aquarists also make their own clay fertilizer balls which do the same thing as the root tabs. Fertilizer clay balls are more of a natural option than root tabs.

The clay fertilizer balls need mainly two ingredients to form. They supple more than 60 micro and macro nutritive elements to the aquatic plants. These clay balls are perfectly safe for the livestock in the aquarium i.e. fish, snail, shrimp etc. moreover, these fertilizer clay balls help to reduce algae.

The main ingredient to make these fertilizers clay balls are Calcium Montmorillonite Clay. This ingredient is used to mold the clay balls. It also supplies bio-materials and trace nutritive elements. It is a natural element that can be found in many waterways. It supplies nutrition to the aquatic plants. It also supplies minerals in the water column. Moreover, Calcium Montmorillonite Clay has healing elements. So, it is also beneficial to fish, shrimp and snails. Many breeders use it in their system. For more benefits of this product, click here.

The second element that is added to these clay fertilizer balls is mixed powdered seaweeds. It really helps quickly to supplement plants with nutritive elements because they don’t have any cellulose binding element. Seaweed is a premium quality fertilizer that has been used by aquascapers since the last two decades. Such as

• Ulva seaweed is specially rich in nitrogen

• Most of the red seaweed species have rich amount of calcium carbonate

• Brown seaweeds are famous for their potash content.

Here are the ways to make clay fertilizer balls:

1. Take 5 tea spoon of Calcium Montmorillonite Clay Powered. It has to be human grade.

2. Take 1 tea spoon of powdered seaweed mix which has to be human grade quality too.

3. Mix the above elements and add water until it forms the consistency of a molding clay.

4. Shape the clay into balls and leave them for some time to harden up.

5. Now comes the fun part. Make holes in the aquarium substrate near the plant roots and insert the clay balls.

6. All is done! Your aquarium will enjoy the clay ball’s immense nutrition for the next 6 months.

Thus, the fertilizer clay balls works as an amazing source of aquarium plant fertilizer.