My 45gallon plan. Sound good??

[Blackwood]

I have a 45 gallon 'high' tank that's 24" tall, 36" wide, and 12" deep (horizontally). This is my plan;

39w x2 T5HO lights. 78W total, two 36" bulbs.
45lbs Flourite bedding, covers the bottom about 3 1/2" deep
5lb C02 bottle with a Spio III glass/ceramic disc diffuser
HOB 40-60 gallon filter, no carbon, only floss for mechanical filtration
Small powerhead at the other end of the tank for circulation (any recommendations?)
Dry dosing with dry ferts from Gregwatson.com (will just CSM+B be enough?)
Mainly Mid to low light plants. I like Indian Fern (aka water sprite), and a few of the easier to grow broad leaf plants. Any recommendations as to easy plants to start with?

I'll also have some community fish in there; mollies, platys, guppies, dragon goby, etc. Not overloaded though.

I had this same basic setup on my 125g tank (scaled up of course) and it worked quite well. That was a few years ago, and I've been out of touch with any tank since then. I used to do 50% water changes and redosing of dry ferts weekly, and that worked very well. Any recommendation as to weekly dosing of CSM+B on a weekly basis? Or just go by fert levels that are measurable?

Any recommendation to a good place online to buy plants? My LFS are severly lacking. Petsmart is about the best one around if that tells you anything.

Any suggestions on my setup or any thing I missed will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[SWerner13]

With such a deep tank and only 78 watts I think the only thing you will be able to grow is low light to maybe medium light plants, in which case co2 and ferts probably aren't neccesary because without the higher amounts of light they won't use it nearly as much. I would consider a higher amount of light if you are planning on doing co2 and ferts.

Liveaquaria.com has a pretty good selection but a smidge pricey. Ebay has some ok stuff.

I haven't used dry ferts, but the method you are describing seems similar to the EI method which in a nutshell is overload your tank with ferts and then do a large water change at the end of the week to rebalance it.

 

[Blackwood]

Plants?

What plants will thrive in that setup? I was running my 125gallon with about 1.6 watts per gallon with PC, and once I got the balance right, it grew like mad. It was the same height (24") as this 45gallon.

78 watts of T5 in a 45gallon tank is just about the same amount of light, so I'm hoping it'll do as well.

I think Indian Fern (water sprite), anacharis, and simple ones like that will do fine. When I had my 125g dialed in, I was getting about 4" of new growth on the anacharis per day. I should be able to get this one going about the same with some work.

Any suggestions on other plants that will do well in low/med light?

 

[Purrbox]

Check out PlantGeek.net's Plant Guide. You can view the listing by lighting level.

 

[SWerner13]

Um I mean i'm no expert but you should be fine with low light plants and even medium one's will probably grow slowly. My main thing was I don't think injected co2 is worth the money to spend, I think its an expense and hassel you don't really need.