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pbr_chick

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jul 15, 2008
Messages
31
Location
Falcon, CO
Hi everyone! My name is Audrea (go by Oddi online... long story haha) and I'm from Falcon, Colorado.

Umm... let's see. I am on my Summer break right now from college so most of my time is spent working at a gift shop in the Springs, hanging out with my boyfriend (Dex) of 3.5 years, or playing with my pets. Right now I have one miniature horse, one bantam chicken, one cat (with kittens at the moment), two dogs, and of course, my fishies.

I currently have two 55 gallon set-ups. One is an established tropical community tank and the other is fairly new and being used to house my about 40 swordtail fry that were born just last Friday (YAY I've been waiting FOREVER). When the fry are big enough to go into my community tank (not ALL of them, of course), I will be re-vamping my second tank. I'm looking for pointers on keeping live plants, especially with semi-aggressive fish. My newest challenge will be to change the gravel from hideous neon rocks (came with the tank... such a deal on craigslist) to eco-complete plant substrate without having to deal with re-cycling my tank (I have fish in there). Any tips would be appreciated.
 
Welcome to the site!! This is a great place to start.

The cycle is handled by the filter, so as long as you don't change the filter, you should not see any problems with re-cycling. The lighting is really the only concern with the live plants. With that size tank, you can basically go with the 1.5-2 watts per gallon (WPG) rule, but that's not a concrete thing. If you want to go with higher-light plants, you can go above 2 WPG, but you will want to get into CO2 injection (much more high-tech). The lower-light option is simple, relatively inexpensive, and you can still find a pretty good selection of plants that will grow quite nicely. I'm sure there will be plenty of other people with many suggesitons. Remember to take pictures! We love to see them here, and you will enjoy looking back at the progress as time goes by.
 
Thanks for the replies!

As for lighting, I have the cheapo fluorescent lights that came with the tank, but my aquarium is situated to where it gets about 10 hours of decent sunlight a day.

I contacted my lfs today and they carry eco-complete (YAY NO SHIPPING!!) and are going to order a live brine shrimp hatchery for me! *dances* I'm so excited.
 
Be careful with the sunlight. It tends to encourage algae, and can really mess with the temperature of the tank. Most people discourage having tanks anywhere close to a window.
 
Be careful with the sunlight. It tends to encourage algae, and can really mess with the temperature of the tank. Most people discourage having tanks anywhere close to a window.

Yeah it is on the opposite wall (the only wall that has enough space to fit my tank AND isn't an outside wall). The temperature remains stable throughout the day. I agree, the algae will probably be a huge pain for me... I just can't afford to upgrade my lighting and close my blinds. Time will tell.
 
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