Large planted tank

[newfrye]

So as I scour the forums here, I notice a lot of the planted tanks are around 15 gallons or so. Anybody have 60+ gallon planted tank? I would like to put real plants in my tank and start lulling out the fake plants. My lighting is 2 4ft T12 6500k 40 watt bulbs. I have DHG in there now, but it doesn't seem to be growing/spreading. It also is not just dying off either. Kind of just hanging out there.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Brookster123]

So as I scour the forums here, I notice a lot of the planted tanks are around 15 gallons or so. Anybody have 60+ gallon planted tank? I would like to put real plants in my tank and start lulling out the fake plants. My lighting is 2 4ft T12 6500k 40 watt bulbs. I have DHG in there now, but it doesn't seem to be growing/spreading. It also is not just dying off either. Kind of just hanging out there. Thanks for sharing.

rivercats has a 220 chalk full of awesomeness! I'm guessing your tank is pretty tall (20-24") this will require a pretty good light to grow most plants, dhg is plant requiring high light, if you want it to carpet you will need some really nice lighting, t5 ho or LEDs..

 

[Alan79]

The larger the tank the better your planting options are in my opinion. The nicest planted tank i have seen on here is a 220G planted in Dutch style (which basically means that the tank is brimming with plants). The downside to larger tanks is that the usable light for plants decreases as your water level increases, fertilizers will cost more when you need to dose for larger water quantities and trimming stem plants in a larger tank can be time consuming until you work out exactly how you like to go about it.

Dwarf hair grass is supposed to need medium to high lighting and i don't know how well T12 bulbs rate compared to T8, T5 and Leds. If i had to guess i would say you are between low to medium lighting with dual 40w T12's. You will be able to grow many plants with those, some plants just don't do well in some tanks though and dwatf hair grass might be one of those plants for you. If you want something that will give you quick results in terms of seeing expansion then i would look out for some water sprite or water wisteria. I have not tried it because it is supposed to grow very quickly and none of my running tanks have space for it. I have also done well with Pennywort and Ludwigia repens when it comes to getting new growth quickly. With the stem plants you can usually just trim off the tips and replant them in the substrate to double your plants. The trimmed end will also start throwing out side shoots from the leaf nodes.

Anyway long answer to a simple question. Yes many people have larger planted tanks. I think that a lot more small tanks (say 15g or below) are used because many people don't have the space for larger tanks while others might see the larger water changes as an issue. If you want to see some realy nicely planted LARGE aquariums google takashi Amano. You will see some fully planted aquariums that you could swim in.