Some questions about beginning a planted tank

[Defence21]

I have recently purchased a 10gal. tank and have allowed it to cycle for almost 3 weeks now. I had a family friend test the water, and he said its good to go, as far as fish are concerned.

But I am not ready for that just yet. I want to add plants and am mightily confused, even after reading many of the stick posts above.

I know I need a flourescent light, but the intensity is where I get foggy. Also, I am very foggy with the CO2 and substrate issues.

So, my questions are as follows:

1. Am I correct about the flourescent light, and is there anything else I need to know?
2. I understand that these plants will need CO2, but how do I go about doing this?
3. What type of substrate do I need? Will plain old gravel work, or am I gonna have to find something special? From what I read, it sounded like gravel will work, but other things are much better.
4. How many plants and what types of plants should I target?

 

[dskidmore]

1. The type of lights you have will influence the type of plants you can keep. A good rule of thumb is 1/Watt per gallon is low-light, 2 watts per gallon medium, and 3 or more is high light. Most websites that sell plants will mark if the plant is a low/medium/high light plant.

2. The fish breath out CO2, so unless you move above the low light range, you do not need to inject additonal CO2. Sometimes injecting CO2 will help cut down on algae, but the plants will do ok without it.

3. Once again, depends on the plants you want to keep. Java moss does really well attached to driftwood. Water sprite can float on the surface, and needs no substrate at all. Fine gravel or coarse sand will be fine for most plants. For really good growth in a high light tank, you might consider some of the organically enriched substrates.

4. Unless you get lighting better than what comes in a standard light hood, you should stick with plants rated for low-light. For a 10 gallon tank, you also want to look for plants that won't grow taller than the tank, or will look nice when pruned back to tank size. Stem plants are easy to grow and nice for beginners. Crypts are nice low-growing plants that do all right in low-light tanks. How many you get depends on your style. the Ammano style aquarium calls for buying alot of plants up front to just pack the tank from the very beginning. I personally like starting with the easier species, then leaving room to add plants as time passes. In my last tank, I just went to a cheap online place, and bought one of a whole bunch of plants that were under $1 each. Some of them have spread like crazy since then, some have just kinda sat there and survived, and some that really required more than my tank provides have been dying out.

My question for you: How did you cycle your tank?

 

[Defence21]

Thanks for the answers to my questions. From what you said, I think I am going to stick to Java moss and water sprite...maybe with one other routed plant. Right now, it seems a bit difficult for me, as I don't have much experience with fish tanks in general.

To cycle it -- and maybe I used the wrong term -- I filled the tank with water and added the appropriate amount of dechlorinater. I have allowed this to sit for nearly 3 weeks. Being that I am on a budget, I haven't been able to buy a filter, hood or heater yet. Although I plan to do so this weekend, and allow my tank to further improve water quality for another week or so before I buy fish.

I really don't know much about the intricacies of the water yet, so I had the family friend test it. He said it was good to go and he also told me he'd teach me how to monitor it and whatnot. A testing kit is also something I will be purchasing in the near future.

Thanks again.

Oh yes, one more thing. Did I understand you correctly in that I don't necessarily need florescent lighting to grow plants? I can simply go with the iridescent hood -- at least for java moss and sprite? Please correct me if I am wrong! Thanks!

 

[Purrbox]

Unless your tank has a source of ammonia, it is not cycled. Basically fish produce ammonia, which is highly toxic to them. Luckily there is a type of bacteria that will convert ammonia into Nitrite, which isn't quite as toxic. There is yet another type of bacteria that converts Nitrite into Nitrate, which is only toxic to fish at really high levels. When you cycle a tank, what you are doing is adding a source of ammonia to encourage the bacteria to reproduce to a point where they can handle the amount of ammonia being added. Running your tank with no ammonia source only serves to test your equipment and usually doesn't need to be done for more than 24-48hrs.

This can be done by using few hardy fish (cycling with fish) or fishless (adding pure ammonia or frozen shrimp). If you chose to cycle with fish, you will need to be very diligent about testing your water and doing water changes whenever Ammonia or Nitrites reach dangerous levels (1+ppm). With fishless cycling you still need to test your water but you don't need to do the water changes since you don't have to worry about hurting your fish. The drawback is that you have to spend several weeks staring at an empty tank. Benefit is that you can add all of your fish at once after the tank has cycled instead of having to add fish slowly to avoid causing another cycle. You can also speed up fishless cycling by cranking up the heat. For either type of cycling you can speed things up by adding filter media from an healthy established tank to your filter to seed it with extra beneficial bacteria.

Incadescent Lighting is all but useless when trying to grow aquatic plants. It's much better at producing light than supplying the plants with what they need. However, you could get the incadescent hood and replace the bulbs with selfballasted compact flourescents. These usually run 9 to 11 Watts and will give you slightly better lighting than a standard flourescent hood would at a cheaper price. Just make sure that the labeling on the bulb states that they are for use with incadescent fixtures.

Best of Luck