plastic to live?

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Sesos

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Jul 25, 2003
Messages
88
Location
Old Town Tacoma
Now that my 10 gal is happy and stable, I'd like to convert from plastic to live plants. I'm currently using gravel. Would I need to get rid of this stuff? If not, can I slowly start replacing plastic with live? Sorry for the newbie question :oops:
 
Depends on the plants and your lighting as well.

I've a couple of Amazon swords in terracotta pots filled with gravel. They are doing well (well, sorta. There are new leaves all over that are green and healthy. My pleco is eating the older ones tho LOL). I did them in pots so the plec wouldn't dig them up, as well as making it easier to move them when i gravel vac. Not a lot of wattage there, and I don't fertilize, although I have a tank full of poopers and that may be why its not necessary ;)

I'm not sure what plants will take hold well in just gravel in the bottom; the others will have to chime in with suggestions.
 
It Depends

By all means, start adding plants. I would check on what your current lighting capability is at present and then match that up with whatever plant(s) you want. The only caveat about adding plants is not to add too many at one time. Start with three to four plants and then check your water conditions to see if they moderate at all. The plants will obviously have an impact on your CO2 levels. In short, easy does it.
 
i had some of the hydrophilia speices grow very well in standard gravel under a standard incandesant light, there a very easy speices to take care of and don't look half bad either. (y)
 
I also also thinking about planting my 10g I have a HOT filter for it should I be removing the bubble stone before I plant anything in it? also should I look into CO2 injection. I only have a few smaller guppies in the tank as it is right now.
 
I planted two ten gallons, one with a retrofit kit that gave me 26 watts total PC fluorescent, and another where I used the incandescent hood that came with the tank and put those pigtail fluorescent bulbs with an incandescent-type screw-in base. I use laterite mixed with gravel in one and plain gravel in the other, and I think you can get away with plain gravel if you use root tablet type ferts. I have planted in sand using the same root tabs. My crypts do very well in plain gravel, as does the hygro (mentioned above) and so far so good with swords. The smaller the gravel the better. If you have larger size gravel, just add some smaller and mix it in. Changing substrate over is very risky to your bioload (been there, made that mistake :oops:) so be very careful and do it very slowly, if you need to remove some. Oh, also the bulb-type dwarf lillies (not aponogeton, tho that will work, too) with the arrowhead shaped leaves have done fine in small gravel. Once you start adding plants, increasing your lighting, adding ferts, you will want to think about CO2, also mentioned above, and there are lots of ways to do that cheaply and simply.
 
I'm in plain gravel. I've only been planted for about 3 months though and things are growing like crazy.
 
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