plants, airstones, and fish??

[muddlehead]

i have a 10 gallon and im just starting to experiement with plants, i have just under 2 wpg from NO lights with no CO2, i installed an airstone for the fish a while ago before i thought about plants, but as i understand it airstones are meant to add oxygen to the water but plants need CO2 to grow, i have one grouping of "mint" plants and i plan on adding a couple groupings of bacopa and java moss if i can find it at my lfs, should i take out the airstone so the fish can make the CO2 for the plants or does that even matter? and what do you think of my plant selection and what other plants do you think would be good for my tank? sorry i dont have a test kit yet so i cant provide any watter variables, thanks for the help

 

[Purrbox]

If you were injecting CO2, the airstone would be working against you by gassing out the CO2. Since you aren't injecting CO2, the airstone can stay.

 

[Jchillin]

I have an airstone running in my low-light tank. Works real well for me.

 

[wobbles]

Plants take in oxygen in darkness. Maybe you can still run the airstone at night, but have it on a timer so it switches off when the lights come on. I saw this in an a lfs and it seemed to work a treat.

 

[An t-iasg]

IME, bacopa did not grow well for me with under 2 watts of light and no CO2. It was very shriveled and stunted-looking. Now that I have above 2 WPG of lighting, and CO2, the bacopa is growing very well. I think crypts would do well in your tank. They don't need high light or CO2 to grow well.

 

[Tiffi]

Cryptocorynes, most Echinodorus and Anubias as well as Javafern and maybe a Tigerlotus should work well.

I am not sure if it will make a big difference adding O2 or not if you are not supplementing CO2. But your plants should produce enough O2 for your fish.

 

[czcz]

I believe the airstone suggestion is good in this non injected tank because as CO2 is taken up in the aquarium, surface agitation brings it back to atmospheric levels. There is an excellent thread here nicely summarized by jsoong:

To recap - Tanks heavily into fish vs. plants need aeration (to provide O2 for the fish). Tanks heavily into plants also need aeration (in this case the plants use up CO2 faster than produced, so aeration will provide CO2 for the plants). Tanks perfectly balanced in fish & plants can be a closed eco-system & aeration is irrelevant. Finally, it is possible to construct a tank where fish stocking is such that CO2 is raised without significant O2 drops, in which case aeration is bad for the plants (but neutual to good for fish).

HTH

 

[muddlehead]

sweet thanks for the advice, my lfs didnt have much in the way of anything else that i wanted besides the bacopa so i got some more, and its only been a couple of day and it has already started growing taller, i fear that it will grow to tall to fast for my little 10 gal, how would i prune the stalks down without killing it? or do i have to wait for new sprouts?

 

[czcz]

The nodes are points where a leaf or new stem grow. You can trim the stem at any node and replant the top. Remove the leaves from the bottom of the new stem if necessary. If you leave the old, bottom part of the stem, new stems will likely grow from that node. You can also take off any stem that sprouts off the side whenever it is big enough to replant. If you want to ID your bacopa, here is a good site: http://www.plantgeek.net/plantguide_search.php?search=bacopa&type=Search

 

[muddlehead]

sweet thanks