First Planted Tank

[LetsBeFriends]

I Have been keeping fish for about 2 years now and i am ready to make the jump to planted tanks. I Plan on using a 20gal Long and it will house a school of 9 tiger barbs. i wanted to know if

Is 20 gal a good size for a first planted tank.

What are some good medium light plants (3wpg)

do i need co2?

what is the best sub-straight??

and i havent bought a light yet, whats a good light to get

any other advice would be great, thanks everyone.

 

[baron von bubba]

I Have been keeping fish for about 2 years now and i am ready to make the jump to planted tanks. I Plan on using a 20gal Long and it will house a school of 9 tiger barbs. i wanted to know if

Is 20 gal a good size for a first planted tank.

What are some good medium light plants (3wpg)

do i need co2?

what is the best sub-straight??

and i havent bought a light yet, whats a good light to get

any other advice would be great, thanks everyone.

tank size is not a problem, some have gorgeous planted nanos @10-15 litres!
3wpg is high light and will pretty much require the addition of co2. if you dont want to add co2 then try to get the lighting below 2wpg of t8. (just a rough guide)
substate, mainly a budget thing. ada or oliver knots at the high end. cat litter/acadama at the other end of the spectrum.
some just use play sand however!!

the set up of choice comes down to a few factors.
cost, maintenance and the plants you want to grow.

low tech tank
low cost, low maint. lighting below 2wpg, no co2, little ferts, no water changes.
this will limit your plant choices by a lot.

high tech
high cost, high maint as upto 10x plant growth, weekly 50% water changes. CO2 addition. regular higher levels of ferts. high water turnover (10x flow per hour recommended)
you can grow whatever you fancy in this set up!

or you can go between the two, add a liquid carbon product and do maybe 25% weekly changes.

 

[LetsBeFriends]

k so i guess im leaning towards a 20gal long, 48W t5 light, probably sand substraight, some ferts, no co2. will this work? and if so what are some plants that would do well in that environment?

 

[baron von bubba]

k so i guess im leaning towards a 20gal long, 48W t5 light, probably sand substraight, some ferts, no co2. will this work? and if so what are some plants that would do well in that environment?

it "could" work, however in my opinion the light seems in the high range, t5 are something like a third more powerful than t8 (not sure about exact figure, but they are certainly more powerful)
most ppl would argue that you need to have carbon supplementation with this sort of lighting.

if you dont want to add CO2, i personally would stick with low lighting. less than 2wpg of t8.

its not the power of the lights that dictate what you can grow. CO2/liquid carbon is much more important.
lower lights and CO2/"liquid carbon" will give you much more options in regards to what you can grow than higher lighting and no CO2, as the most probable thing you will grow in this environment is algae!

 

[Mr Bliss]

I recommend lower light with added CO2 too. Unstable CO2 is less of an issue in a low-mid light tank, and you can get fantastic plant growth with no algae problems just with DIY CO2 or liquid carbon. With high light you'll need both stable CO2 and ample nutrients.

Having said that, having the option of using more light than you need isn't necessarily bad, at least if you can get a good price and can tone the lights down somehow. For instance, my 55gal "garden of trial and error" started from an old marine setup with a powerful metal halide amounting to 3.6 wpg or so. I didn't have much money to spend at the time so DIY CO2 was my only option, and despite making every effort to juggle the bottles in a balanced manner I found myself struggling with a constant cycle of BBA + staghorn coming and going (and any slight neglect led to nutrient deficiency symptoms in the plants). So a couple of months ago I cut the photoperiod down and raised the ballast higher above the tank to reduce the light, and as a result I now only have BBA remaining on bogwood (slowly dying off it seems) and the plants are still growing great, with Ludwigia glandulosa retaining its purple-red color and my new Pogostemon helferi has started carpeting nicely. Even if I eventually do get around to getting pressurized CO2, I might not crank the lights back up, as I'm pretty happy with the way things are going right now. Adding CO2 doesn't seem to require high light, but high light does require (stable) CO2.

 

[LetsBeFriends]

what exactly is a do it yourself co2 system, apologies for the large amount of questions.

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

A DIY CO2 system is usually a bottle that contains yeast and sugar water, with a CO2 resistant airline leading to a simple diffuser (like a diffusion ladder) in the tank.

This post talks about the Nutrafin CO2 system, which is a prebuilt yeast system you can buy if you don't want to build your own.

 

[Truck]

DIY systems are unstable and can be an algae trigger, theyre also not very effective on tanks about 10 gallons IME.

could you not drop the light to 24 watts of T5? it would but much more suitable and you could grow most plants with some liquid carbon and ferts

 

[LetsBeFriends]

i have not actually bought anything yet as i am doing the correct thing and doing all the research before hand, despite the common desire to impulse buy so yes i could get a 24W t5 lamp, but it was my understanding that 2wpg was a medium light source, but it seems that lower light in this case is the better rout, something like 1.5wpg? and i know that the whole wpg thing can be a bit misleading, just like the classic "1 gallon per inch of fish" rule. as for the co2 if it is necessary i would prefer a prebuilt system as i am going for lower maintenance as this tank will be sort of my experiment tank before i attempt to add plants to my 75gal

 

[Truck]

2WPG is Very high light IMO and will grow anything. 1.25-1.5WG of T5 is fine to grow anything IME

 

[LetsBeFriends]

ill deffinitly keep that in mind, i was also reading up on some of the planted tank journals, and had another question

what are the pros and cons of using a nutrient rich sub-straight specifically designed for planted tanks verses lets say regular play sand,

 

[LetsBeFriends]

anyone?

what are the pros and cons of using a nutrient rich sub-straight specifically designed for planted tanks verses lets say regular play sand,

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

In terms of substrate it depends a bit on what kind of "tech level" you're going for. If you're EI dosing ferts, then you don't really need a rich substrate, but if you were going for a "low tech" or "natural" aquarium an enriched substrate is considered important. What it can help with a bit is if you miss a dose, or using a leaner dosing method, etc.

It certainly doesn't hurt to have an enriched substrate (well, except for your wallet), but different brands would have different pros and cons. AquaSoil tends to release ammonia initially, Eco-Complete shouldn't be topped with anything, and Flourite isn't the "richest" out there, but can be mixed with other stuff.