Noob Wants a Planted Pico..!

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Big Tex said:
Well I retrofit a cree led unit into the existing light so im not worried about lighting.

I dont have substrate yet and after reading the reviews and write-ups on floramax I think ill go with it.

I think im gonna shop around and as much as I hate chains I think ill start there, I have a whisper internal filter ill be running with just polyfil and I've already attached a sponge on the intake so im set there.

Would regular tetra water dechlorinator work fine? I might have some leftover from my calculus days.
Click to expand...


Chain stores seem ok for most things. I will never buy fish or plants from a main stream chain store
 
If you go to petsmart they do have the small little plant packages with a wide variety for a fairly decent price...however I suggest you look on line or on here to
 
Umm if they are shipped with a heat pack then that should be good
 
Ok guys I might be set, but I still need help on the shrimp side, how do I care for them?
 
I would recommend one of the neocaridina color variants such as cherry, pumpkin, yellow, blue velvet, red Blue orange or carbon rili, or chocolate...I'm sure I'm missing a few but those are the most common...out of those I would say cherries are the most common
 
Jev12 said:
I would recommend one of the neocaridina color variants such as cherry, pumpkin, yellow, blue velvet, red Blue orange or carbon rili, or chocolate...I'm sure I'm missing a few but those are the most common...out of those I would say cherries are the most common
Click to expand...

Can I order them online? How's the shipping on them? Does anyone sell em on here?
 
Yes you can order them offline and they ship pretty well...you can usually find people on here that are selling them...but I would look on the Shrimp farm
 
RCS are the easiest and least expensive Shrimp. You can get more intense color if you buy Painted Fire Red or other deep red.

They need stable parameters.

You could add a snail or two, but I would not add fish.

Weekly PWCs and Ferts and you'll only need to feed 2-3x a week. I do feed daily, but I have fish and Shrimp.

Low light is easiest, no CO2 required.

You can use Seachem Flourish comprehensive and root tabs for Crypts and Excel for a Carbon source.
1/2 strength Excel to start, as I'm cautious w Shrimp.

This forum has lots of Shrimp info in our invert section.

GL
 
Coursair said:
RCS are the easiest and least expensive Shrimp. You can get more intense color if you buy Painted Fire Red or other deep red.

They need stable parameters.

You could add a snail or two, but I would not add fish.

Weekly PWCs and Ferts and you'll only need to feed 2-3x a week. I do feed daily, but I have fish and Shrimp.

Low light is easiest, no CO2 required.

You can use Seachem Flourish comprehensive and root tabs for Crypts and Excel for a Carbon source.
1/2 strength Excel to start, as I'm cautious w Shrimp.

This forum has lots of Shrimp info in our invert section.

GL
Click to expand...

Very informative bud thanks a bunch,
 
The best thing to do would be to decide on what plants you want to grow, which will determine your lighting, substrate needs, ferts, etc. Honestly, in a tank that small, I would stick with just a few varieties of plants. The plants in your picture are low light plants, and do not require a lot of "extra" care. Shrimp like moss, if I were doing that pico tank, I would go with the play sand, a nice piece of driftwood, java moss, Anubias Nana Petite, crypt wendtii, and maybe some hygro difformis (wisteria) in the back corner. Other than a root tab in the sand under the crypt, I dosed nothing extra.
If you are going to keep shrimp, you might want to go with R/O water. When you decide on which shrimp you want to go with, look up thier water needs. Shrimp prefer softer water with a lower PH, and don't handle metals, etc in tap water very well. For a beginner, I would stick with the neo shrimp, they are the easiest to keep. Cherry shrimp are very popular, but the pumpkins and yellows are very pretty too. You could keep more than 1 color, but neo shrimp will cross breed, so you could end up with funky looking shrimp down the road.
Floramax is a good substrate, but honestly, with a tank that small, it depends on your plant stock and lights if you need to use a quality plant substrate. It may just cause unnecessary extra nutirents you tank cant eat up. Stick with play sand, or buy a small bag of white or black sand from petsmart. The tahitian moon black sand is gorgeous, and really makes the colors of the plants and shrimp pop in smaller tank.
Here is a pic of my 2.5 pico planted tank right after I set it up. I used black sand. The right back corner is wisteria, left front and under the dw iscrypt wendtii (which had to be trimmed when it got too big) and anubias nana petite on the driftwood. The amazon sword in the back left corner was promptly removed as it grows waaaayyyyy too big for a pico of any size. The hairgrass did ok, but with no dosing and only stock light, didnt thrive, and I eventually pulled it out. I kept the betta and cherry shrimp in the tank until I broke it. :-(

Hope all this helps. Planted tanks are fun!
 

Attachments

  • pico.jpg
    pico.jpg
    228.4 KB · Views: 51
Kimlafeiet said:
The best thing to do would be to decide on what plants you want to grow, which will determine your lighting, substrate needs, ferts, etc. Honestly, in a tank that small, I would stick with just a few varieties of plants. The plants in your picture are low light plants, and do not require a lot of "extra" care. Shrimp like moss, if I were doing that pico tank, I would go with the play sand, a nice piece of driftwood, java moss, Anubias Nana Petite, crypt wendtii, and maybe some hygro difformis (wisteria) in the back corner. Other than a root tab in the sand under the crypt, I dosed nothing extra.
If you are going to keep shrimp, you might want to go with R/O water. When you decide on which shrimp you want to go with, look up thier water needs. Shrimp prefer softer water with a lower PH, and don't handle metals, etc in tap water very well. For a beginner, I would stick with the neo shrimp, they are the easiest to keep. Cherry shrimp are very popular, but the pumpkins and yellows are very pretty too. You could keep more than 1 color, but neo shrimp will cross breed, so you could end up with funky looking shrimp down the road.
Floramax is a good substrate, but honestly, with a tank that small, it depends on your plant stock and lights if you need to use a quality plant substrate. It may just cause unnecessary extra nutirents you tank cant eat up. Stick with play sand, or buy a small bag of white or black sand from petsmart. The tahitian moon black sand is gorgeous, and really makes the colors of the plants and shrimp pop in smaller tank.
Here is a pic of my 2.5 pico planted tank right after I set it up. I used black sand. The right back corner is wisteria, left front and under the dw iscrypt wendtii (which had to be trimmed when it got too big) and anubias nana petite on the driftwood. The amazon sword in the back left corner was promptly removed as it grows waaaayyyyy too big for a pico of any size. The hairgrass did ok, but with no dosing and only stock light, didnt thrive, and I eventually pulled it out. I kept the betta and cherry shrimp in the tank until I broke it. :-(

Hope all this helps. Planted tanks are fun!
Click to expand...

awesome write-up! im buying 12 cherries and medium clump of guppy grass off a member here for $20 shipped with a heat pack and my lrs is gonna get rid of all its plants here pretty soon, im talking $1 a piece for me so ill see what i can snap up, if i setup my tank tomorrow and get the snails in by next friday will my tank be cycled?
 
Um maybe if you used seeded media I would be
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
Plants turning to membrane
Replies
6
Views
557
Aiken Drum
Aiken Drum
N
First plants - how to tell if they're doing well?
Replies
1
Views
478
Aiken Drum
Aiken Drum
C
Idiot proof plant recommendations
Replies
3
Views
645
Aiken Drum
Aiken Drum
A
Plant troubles in aquatic jars/vases
Replies
3
Views
438
AlbanyFishGuy
A
P
String Algae help
Replies
0
Views
561
pberm1962
P

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom