From avid botanists to pot smoking hippies, many have longed for an awesome indoor garden.  Imagine being snowed in at -20 degrees and yet being able to sit in a lush garden of summer blooming plants.  It is possible, we here at Fortscribe have tried it and we want to let people in on a few do it yourself secrets that will let you fine tune your hobby and avoid large expenses.

Although many hydroponics enthusiasts feel intimidated  when considering the construction of some massive infrastructure with Sodium Halide bulbs, timed pumps,  UV pulsed microbial control and airators;  we here at Fortscribe suggest that before you worry about anything like that you worry about the fluid you grow your plants in.  Something as simple as a styrofoam board floating on top of a bag of nutrient solution can outperform a high tech set up simply because people do not choose the right media.  So before we go into depth describing construction techniques, let us discuss making your own media!

Making your own Hydoponics Media:

A quick search of the Google for "Hydroponics Media" will yield you lots of websites with offers to sell you expensive "optimal" products.  Where is the fun in that?  You can make your own high quality growth media with a little chemistry know how and some cheap stuff from the pharmacy.

First off, let us look at a few possible recipes:

Recipe 1:

Chemical Dry Ounces Grams Comments
Potassium Nitrate  255g  (Found in some stump removers, refer to our chemistry section to learn how to extract it from the soil.)
Calcium Sulphate  198g Sold as Plaster of Paris
Magnesium Sulphate 170g   Sold as Epsom Salt
Monocalcium Phosphate  113g   (You may easily substitute this with small amounts of other phosphates.  For example,  in the fishing section of Walmart you can find    ("Trisodium phosphate")   
Ammonium Sulfate 43g  -
Iron Sulphate - ---   (Absolutely no need for it to be iron sulphate but a


Here's another one...




Chemical Dry Ounces Grams Nutrient Added
Sodium Nitrate 12.5 355 Nitrogen
Potassium Sulphate 4 113 Potassium, Sulphur
Super Phosphate 5 142 Phosphate, Calcium
Magnesium Sulphate 3.5 100 Magnesium, Sulphur
Iron Sulphate - 2 Iron


Mix all ingredients very well and store in an air-tight container. When needed use '1 t' for each gallon of water. In the table below the following apply: '1 teaspoon = 1 t', '1 tablespoon = 1 T' and I calculate '1 t' to be equal to 10 grams. Be careful with your measurements or you could very well create a mixture toxic to your plants. As for trace elements, these are usually accidental by-products of commercial fertilizers so here is another recipe solely for trace elements:




Chemical Amount
Manganese Sulphate 1 t
Boric Acid powder 1 t
Zinc Sulphate .5 t
Copper Sulphate .5 t


Mix together well and store in another air-tight container. When needed add '.5 t' to 1 quart water and mix well. Add 1 liquid oz of this solution to 3 gallons of your plant nutrients solution from above.

Good luck ...

You are bidding on 100 grams of the amazing AquaOx gravel additive. AquaOx is a unique blend of potassium perchlorate, molybdenum and strontium that serves to both help oxygenate your aquarium and enrich the biodiversity of gravel micro-organisms like Proteobacteria. Proteobacteria are a large and highly important phylum in microbiology, containing many bacteria responsible for nitrogen fixation. While scientists have only scratched the surface on the biochemical and ecologic importance of these organisms, we have learned that multiple species of Protobacteria use perchlorate as a receptor in their anaerobic respiration. Essentially, perchlorate which is a good oxidizing agent, can participate in the electron transport chain of and allow these organisms to generate the energy they use to survive. Scientists have also learned that some of the enzymes these organisms use to survive require unique metal co-factors like Molybdenum and Strontium which often are only found in trace amounts. AquaOx blends all of these essentials nutrients together to hopefully make for a happy tank.

How do you use it? Just mix about 1g per 10 gallon tank size into the substrate of your tank. Because protobacteria prefer more settled and anaerobic environments, we suggest adding it to a lower level substrate, preferably one of a fine substrate.

Could this potentially harm the fish in my tank? If used as directed the amount of perchlorate in your tank should be no greater than about 26mg/L. Unlike some of the other perchlorate salts, potassium perchlorate has a very low solubility in water and if mixed with the substrate it should stay fairly well bound up. Protobacteria and the other bacteria will ultimately decompose the perchlorate into benign products.