First planted setup questions

[Current]

I have a 35 gallon hexagon tank and it is 20 inches tall. Right now I have a java fern and an anubias nana tied to a piece of driftwood with twine. The lighting includes a 15 Watt fluorescent light, and I also keep the tank in direct sunlight during the day.

Questions:

Do I need more light for the tank than I currently have? The hood that the tank came with only takes 15 Watt bulbs.

How long will it take for the plants to attach themselves to the driftwood?

What species of fish would do well with this setup? Or should I add more plants first?

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[aqua man]

well plants add oxygen to the water which is good for fish. and the fish give off co2 which is good for the plants so getting a few small fish at first to se how it goes wouldnt hurt. maybe a few small danios. make sure your tank is cycled first before the fish. dont get fish like live bearers such as mollies who need salt plants dont like salt. i just recently started with plants, and from what i can tell you is a few at first you should be ok with the co2 that the fish give off but eventually you need a co2 injector, the light should be sufficient for what you have but again the more youget the more light you need.

 

[Purrbox]

Since you've got very little light over the aquarium which is tall, you currently have very low light based on just the fixture. You did mention that the aquarium is also getting direct sunlight during the day. This makes it very hard to guesstimate how much light you have in total. You'll have to determine that from how well the plants are growing.

How long it takes for the plants to attach will depend on how fast they are growing. The rate of growth is first and foremost determined by the amount of light you provide, followed by the amount of CO2 availalbe, then the amount of Macro Nutrients, and finally the amount of Micro Nutrients. Typically I would expect the plants to attach within a couple of months.

I would stick to small fish that aren't very active. Since it's a tall aquarium you haven't got a lot of horizontal swimming area, so active fish like danios wouldn't be happy. Further there isn't as much surface area, so you'll probably want to make sure that you stock the aquarium lighter than if it was a standard or long.

If you can heavily plant the aquarium and get the plants growing well, then you can do what's known as a silent cycle. A heavily planted aquarium that is stocked with fish extremely slowly should never see a spike of either Ammonia or Nitrite. If you've got enough light, then some Vals would be really nice for the background of such a tall aquarium.

 

[Current]

Purrbox,

Would it be possible for me to change the ballast on the hood to get a higher wattage bulb?

 

[JohnPaul]

Is your current light a 15W flourescent tube? 18" long? I've never actually seen a 35 Hex in person so I can't exactly picture what the top of the tank looks like, so if any of these suggestions don't seem to make sense--well, it's my ignorance of the arrangement at the top that is the reason. So, as best as I can figure, you have a couple of options you could consider...

1. If you have space on top of the tank, you could purchase a second strip light of the same type as the one you currently have. This would double your light to 30W. The downside of this option is that you have two light strips on top of your tank, which is bulky and also requires two plugs (which may or may not be an issue depending upon how many other things you have plugged in).

2. You could replace your current strip light with an 18" incandescent strip light, such as this one. Once it arrives, you don't put regular light bulbs in it (regular bulbs don't produce light at the proper wavelengths for growing plants) but instead, put in two spiral compact flourescent bulbs. These are made by several companies (GE and Sylvania are the most well-known), cost only a few dollars each, and are stocked by Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and other such places. You just need to be sure that you get bulbs with the right "color temperature" (K-rating). You want to be sure to get something between 5000k and 10,000K. I currently use this sort of setup on two of my 10 gallon tanks; I use 15W 6500K GE bulbs that I bought at Wal-Mart for about $3 each. As for how high you can go, you need to check the wattage rating of the strip light; mine is rated for 50W, so that means the highest you could go safely (without it being a fire hazard) would be two 25W bulbs. I don't know if CF's come in 25W size, I know I've seen 20W ones before. If you used two of those, it would give you 40W over 35 gallons of water...which is still very much low light, but at least better than what you have.

3. If you want to have a chance to grow anything more than the lowest of low-level lights, you're going to need to invest in a more high-powered (and expensive) lighting system--probably a "power compact" system. I'm totally out of my league when it comes to these, as I have never used them, but just doing a super quick search online, here are a few things I just saw online doing a quick search:

20" Orbit 2x40W plus Lunar Light for $130
20" Current 2x40W plus Lunar Light for $105
20" Coralife 96W quad tube Light for $100

If you can go up to 24" sizes, then for roughly the same prices (perhaps a tad more) you can easily get yourself up to 130W or more.

So it comes down to how much light you want, which will impact how much else you need to do. As a rule, if you are at around 2 watts per gallon (WPG) or less, you can get by without any CO2 or any regular fertilizer regimine. As you ramp up the light higher than that, CO2 starts becoming a better idea and beyond about 3 WPG, CO2 injection is virtually a necessity. Same goes for regular dosing of macro and micro fertilizers.

Last note: those lighting fixtures I listed above are just some samples of what is out there. I am sure that is not an exhaustive list, nor can I say if other options are "better" than those. The same can be said for the online site I linked them from; Big Al's is a good source of lots of aquarium stuff but they are by no means the only place, or even the best place, to buy such fixtures. They just happened to be one site I have bookmarked so that's why I linked from that site. Once you decide what you want, you may very well be able to get a better deal somewhere else.

Good luck!

 

[Current]

Update:

I just went out to Petco and bought a 10 Watt Mini Compact Fluorescent 50/50. It puts out 50% 10,000K daylight and 50% Actinic 03 blue. It is high intensity output. On the box, it says that it is equivalent to a 50 Watt incandescent bulb.

Would this help plant growth? Is this enough light?

 

[newfound77951]

Unfortunately, the actinic part of that bulb is pretty much useless to the plants. And while yes, it is equivalent to a 50 watt incandescent, it's still just 10 watts fluorescent, which is not very much. You can find 10000K screw in fluorescents, but again, with the depth of your tank you'll need a few of them to get enough light.

You may be able to gut your strip and put a new ballast in, but I'd think about just getting one of the lights that JohnPaul mentioned if you do want to grow more than very low light plants. Hex tanks are a pain because they are so deep, you need more wattage "power" to get the light through all that water down to the bottom where the plants are. You want to shoot for at least 1 watt (fluorescent) per gallon for low light plants, 2 wpg for medium light plants, and 3+ for high light plants (at which point you'd need CO2 and ferts as well).

One nice thing with buying a fixture with more wattage than you think you need (like the ones mentioned, which usually come with one actinic and one regular bulb) is that in that case you can keep one actinic bulb in, which cuts down the wattage, but later on if you decide to try some higher light plants all you need to do is switch out a bulb instead of getting a whole new light. Actinic bulbs are for saltwater tanks, BTW.

 

[Current]

Would this current setup be okay for low light plants like java moss, java ferns, anubias etc?

 

[newfound77951]

Is the 10 watt 50:50 in addition to the 15 watt fluorescent? If so, that's about 20 useable watts, on a 20" deep tank. It might be OK particularly if you have the plants on driftwood off the bottom (ie closer to the light). But the plants will grow very slowly, so don't expect to see big changes in a short amount of time. IMO the sunlight will cause more problems than it will solve, as it will grow a lot of algae and heat the tank up.

 

[Current]

The 50/50 10Watt fluorescent is the only light source at this time. I have a java fern and an anubia tied to driftwood on the bottom.

 

[adz1]

get your self a 24"t5ho flourescent light 6700K.
will work really good on a 20" tall tank.

 

[Purrbox]

Keep in mind as you are considering your lighting options that the direct sunlight is adding to the amoung of light that your aquarium is receiving. As a result you have more than very low light. Just how much is the question.

Your 15 watt fixture was better than replacing it with the 50/50 compact fluorescent. I'd put the 15 watt fixture back.

While you could replace the ballast to be able to use a higher wattage bulb, you need to keep in mind that a higher wattage bulb will take up more space that you may or may not have in the fixture. Another option when replacing the ballast is ODNO (Over Drive Normal Output) which allows you to run more power through the original bulb to get more light out of it. It also shortens the life of the bulb.

 

[Jchillin]

I agree, the 50/50 combo did nothing to improve your situation. Problem that you have is there aren't many options available to you with NO bulbs. You could change out the fixture and replace with a higher output ballast.

I'm not so sure that ODNO is applicable to 15w power set ups.

 

[Current]

Thanks for the advice and help. Right now I'll decide to hold off on having a planted tank; I've decided instead to just have driftwood.