I am not able to keep plants alive for too long!

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unknown_7

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Jan 29, 2005
Messages
318
Location
Canada
I cannot keep plants alive longer than a month. I would like to know how to maintain those tanks with all those many beautiful plants with as little maintainence as possible, if that is possible. I can't maintain them very well. What should I do. Stick to fakes and rocks.
 
with no information about your tank (tank size, lighting type, total lighting wattage, plants kept, substrate type, fish kept) I cannot answer your question.

try reading one of the many stickies.

large, high light tanks with lots of plants require daily maintenance, from simple fert dosing, to pruning and 50% water changes.

its not for everyone.
 
The tanks I am starting with are a 30 and 20 gall. For wattage it says 14W. The substrate is gravel. Fish in the 30 are two yellow labs and a blue p.demasoni. The 20 has guppies, gouramis, platies, mollies and otos. I forgot the name of the plants. However, I think I need some hardy ones.
 
Well, the wattage of your lamps are pretty low. 0.7 watt per gallon and 0.47wpg is really too little. I think you should consider to get more light to get to at least 30W for the 20g and 45W for the 30g. That way you would be in the 1.5wpg range, which is considered low-medium light.

The next step would be to get some fertilizer in your gravel, laterite or so.

Further you can look at www.tropica.com which plants suit low light conditions. There are quite a few like Cryptocorynes and echinodorus for example.

I'm not sure if you would need some DIY CO2 with that wpg-rating. Maybe somebody else can answer it. DIY CO2 is really not expensive.
 
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