Co2 Pump?

[mullmatt]

Greetings I am a newbie to all this and have acquired myself a Juwel Rio 125 Tank. I want to setup a community tropical tank and plan to have a few live plants to fill out the back of the tank and create hiding places for the fish. If I am to do this will I require a CO2 pump? Thanks in advanced

 

[Truck]

have you got T5's or T8's? lights? T8's being an inch in diameter and T5's less

 

[bae1994]

not all plants requir c02 i think people use it as it makes the plants grow fast but if you get some easy care plants then you should be fine

 

[Truck]

not all plants requir c02 i think people use it as it makes the plants grow fast but if you get some easy care plants then you should be fine

depends on lighting if its high plants wont grow without CO2 or ferts

and then you will have a tank full of algae, not nice!

 

[bae1994]

yeah suppose

 

[three-fingers]

If it's the standard Juwel Rio 125 with either T8 or T5 Hi-lite unit, you don't necessarily need CO2, just choose a mixture of easy fast and slow growing plants like Hygrophila (fast), java fern (slow), Anubias (slow), etc.

There's a pinned list of such plants in the planted section . Here.

If you find the lightings too high and suspect that's why you are getting algae (though if you get enough enough of the right plants this shouldn't be an issue at all), you can just add floating plants to block some light.

So basically, no, you don't need CO2 if you don't want to go down that road, just choose the right plants and don't upgrade the lighting or anything .

 

[waterdrop]

You used to be able to search this forum and find a few lists of "easy plants" that members had made. These, usually anchored by Java Fern, were a reasonable place to start for finding plants that will work in low light (.8 to 1.5 watts per gallon or so, to be very general) and either without CO2 or perhaps with liquid carbon. Lower light equates to slower growth and less consumption of nutrients.

~~waterdrop~~