plant ideas for 240 litre aquarium

[jasiep89]

I tried to track down the T8 on Fluval's site but they only detail LED. Chances are the tubes that come with the unit will not be worth anything, this is standard. I have bought Aqueon tanks a few times with T8 lighting included, and the tube goes into recycling. But we can sort that out later. The tubes I previosly mentioned are probably your best bet. You can get them from home improvement stores (not sure what you have in the UK). Other options (more expensive, but very good light) are the ZooMed series (I would use one UltraSun and one TropicSun) or the Hagen "Glo" series (2 Life-Glo 6700K) or you can use a Life-Glo and 1 TropicSun. The TropicSun is slightly warmer (increased red which is important for photosynthesis) and makes a nice combo with the cooler Life-Glo or UltraSun which are 6700K and 6500K respectively.

You might be better without the additional reflectors. The tubes I have suggested are more intense lighting and will allow you more plant options, but one has to keep things in balance to avoid algae issues. Even the additional daylight in summer (longer duration and brighter) entering a window can offset this balance. A timer for the lighting is very sensible, as having the light on for the same duration and period each 24 hours is not only better for plants (and thwarts algae), it is much better for the fish.

Now to your cycling question. I never "cycle" new tanks. I use live plants. Some call it "silent cycle" because the bacteria still colonize, but with live plants it is a slower cycle and you won't even see ammonia or nitrite. Plants need nitrogen, it is a macro-nutrient. Aquatic plants prefer nitrogen in the form ammonium (ammonia) so they will take this up readily. And their uptake of ammonia/ammonium is faster than the nitrifying bacteria. Provided you have some fast-growing plants--and here nothing is better than floating plants--you will not need to "cycle" artificially. Once the plants are settled and showing signs of growth (this is quick in floating plants because they are fast growing species), you can add the first fish. Doing this slowly works very well, I've done it dozens of times now, and never lost a fish, and never had ammonia or nitrite above zero. We can discuss which fish; some are better than others, not because of any harm from cycling issues, but because of the biological system. Some fish should only be added to established aquaria. Other issues are territory...when adding gourami for example it is better to have some or all of the intended smaller shoaling species already present. We can get into this more as you want.

A couple photos of my comparable 70g tank may illustrate all this. This tank is 4 feet by 18in width by 21 inches height, so pretty close, and the lighting is the dual 4-foot T8 tubes, one 6500K and one 5000K using Phillips tubes. It has been torn down and reset a few times over the past 20 years I've had it, so these photos will show what is attainable. I've stayed with plants that thrive, having tried many. One of these will show how thick the chain swords got before I thinned them out.

Byron.

Wow never seen a planted tank look so bright i know what you mean now with the tubes the colours look amazing