Aquarium water, fact or myth?

So believing that natural lifeforms in the soil are the link to optimum plant development and that 'artificial' fertilisers are the last resort, would your aquarium water yield a suitable environment to support such microscopic soil life , thereby achieving the desired result ?

 

You'd need someone with a better knowledge of microbiology and soil chemistry to answer that, lol.

I think some of the time there is a grey area regarding how well we believe fertilisers to work, whether it's your Miracle-gro type fertiliser or just old aquarium water.

If you get good growth and general health is good in a plant is it truly down to the fertiliser only. The plants positioning, humidity, soil type, pot size, watering schedule, loads of things come into play. It's too easy, and costly, to put all the merit on the fertiliser only.

What's not to say that that plant would fare just as well if it was just watered with plain old rainwater from your garden water butt, and never "fed" at all?

I suppose an experiment is easy. Just get two identical plants of the same size, same everything in fact, and feed one with just aquarium water and the other with water but with bi-monthly feed too.

A substantial difference over a period of time between the two plants would prove one way or the other. If they were similar then free aquarium water, as opposed to pricy ferts would-be the way forward.

I'm pretty new to plant keeping, I'm sure experiments such as this are done all the time, they'd be easy enough to do.

 

But you should feed the soil, not the plant.....