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[Gooner]

Hi,

I currently have a 30g tank (Jewel Rekord 120) with sand and plastic plants and would like to give the real plants a go but need a bit of advice or suggestions.

Current stocking

1 x Festive Chichlid
2 x "Red" Rams 1m 1f
10 x Tiger Barbs
1 x Bristlenose Plec
1 x Clown Plec
Overfilterd With
1 x Eheim Pro 2224 External
1 x Eheim Ecco 2233 External

I would personally like to change back to small pea gravel as I believe it would be better with real plants (correct me if i`m wrong).

I have a few questions I`d like to ask to get me off the mark, so bear with me if they sound daft.

1. What plants would be best with my current stocking? And easiest to look after?
2. Would gravel be better than sand for the plants?
3. If I go with gravel, what depth should it be?
4. Would a 30 watt bulb be sufficient? (Jewel have just released a 45 watt bulb to fit my tank).
5. Would the plants need feeding with some kind of food?

If there is anything missing please advise.

Thanks,

Gary.

 

[aaronnorth]

1) cichlids usely destroy plants, easy robust plants are vallis, anubias species, java fern, hygrophilia species.
2) gravel is better i think as some of the waste products that fall through the small gaps act as fertilisers while pea gravel will still hold most of it on the top for easy vaccuming. If you were to change then buy some fertiliser substrate like tetraplant to give the plants a daily source.
3) you would want about 2" - 3" of gravel or 2" of fertiliser and 1.5" of gravel
4)30w gives you 1WPG which isn't much to grow plants, the 45w would give you 1.5WPG, which is much better, also try to get a tube specifically designed for plants with a kelvin of 6500k - 11 000k or you could buy an extra tube and starter unit which would cost about £30 for a 36w and starter, i bought an interpet PC (power compact) 36w T5 daylight plus from aquatics online. WPG is watts divided by gallons.
5) heavy root feeders like cryptocoryne's and amazon swords would need root tabs or substrate fertiliser. others need liquid fertiliser, seachem brand is a good quality food, i use nutrafin plant gro - weekly and JBL florapol 24 - daily although i might switch to using seachem flourish and excel daily.

why don't you buy or build a co2 unit.you have the option of DIY £3 max, a yeast based system like nutrafin plant system £20 or a pressurized system £100 - £250

You have excellent filtering for a planted tank, just put the sponges in, lots of biological media in and peat if neccesary, no carbon. i have 4 sponges, 1 basket of peat, 2 baskets of biomax, and a small basket of fine filter wool.
i use the nutrafin yeast based kit, very simple and efficient.

 

[Gooner]

Thanks,

I`ll take a trip to the Lfs at the weekend and see whats available. I know they have a vast range of plants but if I remember correctly most of the plants are not labled.

Guess I`ll do a bit of research and take some pics with me.

What do you do with the potted type? Take them out of the pot and remove all of the "stuff" around the roots, or just plant them directly in the substrate?

Sorry for all the questions but I`m not very green fingered and tried a planted tank a few years ago and failed miserably. I`d like to get it right this time around.

 

[aaronnorth]

remove as much as possible but if a bit is stuck then leave it, take lead weights off aswell as they restricct growth