First Planted Tank

[sharpshark]

Hi,
I have started to try and have my first planted tank, its a 120cm x 30cm w x 45cm h, approx 150 litres, 60 ish gallons, a fluval 304 external filter, and I have finally got two lights, a 35w and 40w, so about 1w per 2 litres as I've read should be just enough.

I have put a plant based substrate of about 1cm (as per instructions) and 2 - 3 inches of 1-3mm gravel (got bored of sand LOL)

I bought two potted plants, I wanted to make sure that they were growing properly before I completely planted it out, one is an amazon sword, the other is a long thin leafed plant of which the name escapes me at the mo', but the LFS advised me was a hardy plant.

The tank was a converted mature tank, I just changed the substrate, it is fully cycled and has some neons, a couple of guppies and a bristle nosed plec at present in it.

After a couple of weeks, the plants were starting to wilt and curl, and so I then read a bit more and decided to buy some fert tabs which I have put in a couple around the two plants.

This seemed to perk them up a bit, but certainly not thrive, and so reading up again it seemed that it was inevitable that there was not enough CO2 in my water, and then went and bought a kh/gh test kit.

The water readings were high, which is not unexpected as I always knew my water is quite hard here in the south of England,

KH 10
GH 19
PH is reading at about 8.5

So having run out of large sums of money I was impressed with the DIY CO2 systems, and have created a couple of 2 litre pop bottles which run through a small powerhead into the air intake, which I think seems to munch it up quite nicely, scattering very very small bubbles throughout the tank.

There doesn't seem to be much improvement a week or two later, I am not positive my DIY mixture is good enough, I am also not happy with the yeast I bought, are there any UK members who use this method, and can tell me what mixture they use and which yeast and where they buy it? There seems to be ALOT of differing ideas on how much/what to use.

Any suggestions, comments and help would be welcomed.

Thanks

 

[nry]

Many plants do take a while to settle in to a new tank - swords can lose many leaves and grow new ones when re-planted which may explain your problems a bit. CO2 is not really needed unless you go above 1.5wpg - a decent liquid fertiliser would be useful long term alongside the root tabs (which with a decent substrate like yours you should not need presently), I'd also make sure the other plant is a true aquatic - any piccies?

 

[sharpshark]

Thanks,
I would like my plants to do well, so I guess I need another light tube to put it into 2 watts per gallon (there goes the elecy bill!!), thus I would be a good idea to add CO2, its not that I want to say "yeah i have CO2", the main reason is the high PH/KH/GH in the tank, this stems from my tap water, where the levels are exactly the same, 8.5 10 and 19, and other than buying a RO unit (nuh uh) or adding chems which I don't want to have to do for the rest of my life I can't see any other way to reduce these levels.

Heres a pick

 

[john starkey]

Thanks

Heres a pick

Hi Sharpshark, here is some constructive critism if you dont use more plants than you have at the moment you will some serious algae issues, you must try to plant at least 90% of the substrate go for fast growers look on greenline aquatic plants they are very reasonable and you get loads for your money good luck john.

 

[sharpshark]

Thanks John, noted, I am gonna plant more, and have already bookmarked that site from a previous sticky LOL, its just that I want to make sure that I can grow two before I plant the lot !!!!

The algae isn't an issue at the min, not sure why, I never get algae in this tank, and have had it in this house for about a year, weird, but true.