Substrate, Poops, and Plants

[Terrance]

Hey guys

I'm bored with my tank and I feel like I need to fill up more of my 120g tank. I'm going to try plants in the display tank. Right now I have a small layer of 1" sand topped with 2" of large rock pebbles.

I want to grow Amazon swords since my tank is tall enough and the root system for the sword will be more difficult to uproot than the average plant.

My light: 8000K 106watts
My supplements to be used: Seachem Excel and Tab, possibly Potassium

Question:
1. Is my light good enough to grow amazons if I use the Excel and Tab.
2. Do I let all the poop settle in the gravel? My Fahaka's waste a pretty large and disgusting. I heard people not touching gravel because the waste are good for the plants. Would too much poop get into the large rock gravels and make more problems for the system than good for the the plants?

 

[aqua_chem]

What kind of light is this? I'm more concerned with the number and type of bulb (T5, PC, etc) than wattage.


As far as vacuuming goes, there is some debate on the issue. While plants can probably use some of the gunk in the substrate, it can be a trade off between cleanliness and fertilizer. What I usually do is avoid deep vacuuming, as that will disturb the roots, but try to vacuum either shallowly or superficially to remove what might have settled. With root tabs, you will have a little bit more leeway, as many of the ferts that a plant might need will be found there, making the fish poo less important. Just be sure not to vacuum up your root tabs, because that makes a mess.

Also, I don't know if the fish you want to put in is plant safe. As I honestly have no clue one way or the other, you might want to do some research to make sure that he's not going to wreck the place.

 

[Terrance]

T8. I got 3 of them, 32w each.

My fish is not plant safe, but I am going to try it now that he has stopped digging.

 

[nereksnad]

greetings.

the only method i am aware of to measure wether or not you have sufficient lighting is to measure how many watts of light you have for each liter of water, the minimum recommended amount is 0.50 W/L

you have 0,23 W/L
if you have light reflektors, the light will be increased to 0,35 W/L.

in that regard, you have too little light for such a large tank.

as for what type of tubes you sould use, there is must debate on the subject. some say low kelvin, some say purple and red on the light scale, some point to research that shows that none of it matters at all, but from what i can gather 6-7K kev is good and the wavelenght you sould try to mimic is this: http://akvariegoedning.dk/images/stories/billeder_til_artikler/plante_spekter.png
possibly by a mix of different tubes.

sincerely,
nereksnad