First Foray

[SkiFletch]

Hey all, so after your wonderful help with my CO2 questions I'm back with more I've begun my foray into plantkeeping with the addition of some Anibius Nana as everyone seems to think its a really hardy plant. I'm "In" with Dave, one of the salesman at my LFS and he gave me enough Anubias plants to cover about 1/4 of my substrate for a whopping $8 (bout a 96 square inch area). So now that I'm here I'm wondering how deep into all these aspects of plant keeping I'm going to go. A little bit about myself, I have a 20gal Tall tank with an overhang Eheim filter. I've got 2 flourescents for a whopping 1.8 WPG. One tube has a fancy schmantzy 8500K tube in it marketed to cover the spectrum needed by plants and another I have no clue about, but probably Generic.

Current water stats upon introducing the plants are 40ppm NO3, 1ppm PO4, pH 8, KH ~15. With the exception of Nitrates everything else is present in my tapwater at nearly identical levels. I dont know what my GH is, but my best friend who is a water systems engineer locally (designs water treatment plants here) Ensures me that its one of the higher GH's in the state. Apparently that means i have enough calcium and magnesium

I've read all the pinned articles and I guess according to gf225 I have a low-tech tank. Therefore I may not even need CO2 addition (coming to this realization after asking all those questions on CO2 )? Will there be anything wrong with adding CO2 to the tank with its current "lower" WPG? Will my Anubias survive as is with lower light and lower nutrients from my tapwater? The reason I'm asking all these questions is that I dont want to overwhelm myself with new methods here and would prefer to take some baby steps with the ultimate goal of a largely planted tank some ways off into the future (3-6+ months).

With that goal in mind what do you all think should be my next implimentation? More light? CO2? Fertilizer? More plants? All of the above? Combinations of the above?

As always, your help is appreciated

 

[zig]

The Anubias will do just fine with the lighting you have, they are a low light plant.

The addition of co2 is allways benificial for the plants and you will see more growth as a result, its at higher lighting levels that the addition of co2 is a must and not an optional extra as it were.

Your light tubes may need some attention particularily the one that you are unaware of its spectrum, ideally the spectrum you want is somewhere between 5500 and 6500 kelvin although the 8500k tube you have is ok you may want to change the other one, this is the area you need to look at first without the correct lighting you will struggle, but 1.8 watts per gallon is a level of lighting at which a lot of plants will grow very sucessfully.

Your water stats are good although your no3 levels are quite high at 40ppm, your tank may be well stocked with fish to produce these levels along with whats in your tapwater, you may not need to add much fertiliser at all to this tank, although you should monitor your levels especially in the beginning to get a feel for whats going on (how much and how quickly the nutrients are being used up)

I suggest you have a look at this link below, its specificially aimed at low light non co2 tanks, i know you have co2 but this is another option with the lighting you have, the article explains in detail how to sucessfully keep a non co2 tank.

For the moment i would stick with what you have, sort out the tubes add more plants and aquascape this tank..............and then post pics

Anyway i hope i answered most of your questions.

Non Co2 planted tanks

 

[SkiFletch]

Thanks for the link, that was pretty helpful. Hope that method works for me