The Complete APT Range

Far fewer than the range might suggest. A thriving planted tank needs only two things from us: a source of nutrients and a good foundation. Start with a liquid fertiliser - APT 3 suits most tanks - and an active substrate such as APT Feast, or APT START and APT Jazz if you're building on a different soil. Everything else is situational: reach for an algae treatment only when algae appears, APT PURE if you fill from the tap, APT SKY if you use RO or soft water, and APT Balance when cycling a new tank. There's no need to run the whole range, and APT works with or without CO2.

Most fertilisers still in use today were designed decades ago to supplement hardy plants in fish tanks. APT was formulated for the modern planted aquarium - for today's plant hybrids, lighting and CO2. Its Capstone formulation is an all-in-one, supplying macro, micro and trace nutrients in a single calibrated ratio rather than splitting them across bottles or following generic dosing. Compared with conventional fertilisers, APT 3 is around three times more concentrated for demanding species and twice as nitrate-limiting - a deliberately lower nitrogen ratio that draws out richer colour. The difference is calibration, not strength for its own sake.

Yes. Every APT fertiliser has been tested safe even for delicate shrimp such as Crystal Red and other Caridina, in tanks holding breeding populations over the long term. They do contain a tiny, chelated amount of copper - but copper is an essential micronutrient for shrimp as much as plants: shrimp blood is copper-based, using haemocyanin much as ours uses iron. The dose in APT sits far below toxic levels even if heavily overdosed. The water care range is actively shrimp-friendly; APT SKY remineralises RO water to the parameters shrimp need. The one group to apply with care is the algae treatments: safe used to instructions, but never dosed directly onto animals.

In most cases, yes. APT liquid fertilisers work over any substrate - inert gravel and sand as readily as APT Feast or another aquasoil - and the water care and algae treatments suit essentially any tank, whatever else you run. Within the range, the products are designed to complement one another. The one thing we'd avoid is dosing two different liquid fertilisers at once: the value of APT lies in a precisely calibrated nutrient ratio, and adding a second fertiliser on top means you no longer control that ratio. Choose one liquid-fertiliser system and let it do its job. If you're moving to APT from another brand, introduce it gradually over a couple of weeks rather than switching overnight.