my 90 gal.

[cabezon]

I have kept plants in tanks before, but nothing that Iwould consider a planted tank. Now, I have a 90 gal community tank. I have some swords and some other plants from Severum Mama. What few that made it from the pleco rooting around. grr. Now I have scored a CO2 system and today I ordered a new ballast to upgrade to HO t5s for my 48" light. I have a two bulb fixture, and two 2 bulb 24" fixtures. SO I will have plenty of light.

now, I guess I do not have enough green to counteract the CO2 and after a few hours the danios start heading to the surface. I would rather not use them as a guage, how else should I measure the proper levels of CO2 in teh H2O? I did leave a little surface ripple in teh other canister filter's outflow.

Also, I guess I will have to make the move from Miracle grow, to an aquatic fert?

 

[Crepe]

You need a drop checker which you can make. There are directions online for making them. Or you can buy red sea's drop checker for 20 bucks. In the mean time you should use a Kh-Ph chart which can also be found online.

20-30ppm is the good zone for co2. You should be dosing dry ferts. Buy KNO3 Potassium Nitrate for nitrogen dosing, KCL for Potassium dosing (also known as muriate of potash, salt substitute, potassium chloride), K2HPO4 or Potassium biphosphate it's available in the form of fleet enema at your drug store. The first chemical can be found in the form of stump remover at a hardware store and the second as "No Salt" in your grocery store. People also suggest to dose with chelated trace elements. They can be found in your garden store as specialized liquid fertilizer. They need heavy diluting however as plant ferts are too concentrated for water plants. There are fertilizing guides on this forum.