Suggestions and opinions please

[lordheavyc]

Hello everyone. Below is my 15 gallon planted tank. Inhabitants include 6 Harlequin Rasbora, 3 kuhli loaches, and 1 male betta. So far the plants have all been low tech but I've recently installed a Co2 system and want to start getting some nicer plants. Substrate is basic and and I've been dosing with flourish and leaf zone. So help with scaping and suggestions for new plants would be awesome. Even tips or advice for my set up in general are welcome. Thank you

 

[ZxC]

Oh boy..... lots of potential here.....

First and foremost, I see a CO2 tank, so +1 to that!
Second, what lights are you running and for how long per day?
Third, how much / often are you dosing those fertilizers?

Ideal CO2 levels will cause a 1.0 - 1.2 drop in pH, that will get you 30-40 ppm of CO2 in the water, right were it should be.

Depending on the light, you may need to up your fertilizer game. Leaf Zone and Flourish are great niche products, but are not complete fertilizers. You are dosing no PO4 and no NO3, both of which are macro nutrients that plants need a lot of. Fish + biological processes produce these compounds naturally, but depending on how hard you drive the tank (how much light) it may not be enough.

 

[lordheavyc]

So I'm currently dosing those two days twice a week. However taking advice from other people I may be switching you thrive for my ferts. Also looking into doing root tabs. The light is a LED strip from Amazon. I'm not entirely sure the output because I bought it cheap and they don't sell it on Amazon anymore. The lights are on a timer set for 9 hours a day. Currently I have the Co2 hooked up to the pH controller which is set up 7.0. When running I think I'm getting about .5 drop per second.