First Plants..

[AncientMariner]

People have been advising me to go with some tall live plants which I am prepared to give a go. But I would prefare tall plants which are easy to care for & ones which my fish won't eat away. Is this possible? What are they called?

I have Arcadia I-Bar T5 lighting with a marine white & freshwater tube in it.

Here is a picture of my tank which is 24inches in height. (Approx 320litres)

I started fish keeping in May 2005 so limited knowledge.

 

[jimbooo]

Hi there.

well the first thing that springs to mind is vallis. it is actually the plant in the top centre of your background, the thinn reedy plant. it is not expensive and will survive in the majority of tanks without increacing lighting and adding anything special. if it dies you wont have wasted a lot of money. other options are amazon swords (echinodorus _____) is the family they come from. any of these will look good although they do need added root fertaliser tabs available at most stores.

i could go on and list loads but most will require changing your tubes (the 10,000K marine white is too high in the blue area for planted tanks and will promote algae) and adding a nutrient rich substrate, co2 etc... for a start i'd suggest adding some vallis, then maybe some java fern and anubias. all those are slow growing low light plants that should be okay in your tank.

 

[AncientMariner]

Cheers for the info jimboo. You mentioned the algae due to my 'Marine White' tube, do you think this is currently why I'm having algae issues at present?

The thing is I don't know what is classed as bad algae. How long following a 25% water change should I expect to see algae?

 

[EliteFishy]

are all those plants just in the background picture?

 

[IovaykInD]

It looks like he has java fern and some sagittaria as real plants inside his tank. The rest is the background.

There is no such thing as good algae unless you have algae eating fish. I think you are referring to bacteria, because there is the good bacteria inside your filter, which is used to destroy the fish waste and then in turn can be taken out of the tank by water changes.

After I clean my tank glass of algae, after about five days, I start to see spots of algae on the tank. I clean the glass every week and it seems to be fine.

Have you tried a photoperiod? This is where you turn off the lights during the middle of the day so that algae can't get hold as well. You use a timer to turn the lights on for five hours, off for two, and then on for another five. It has helped algae a bit, because in the past, i've had to clean the glass every third or fourth day.

Isaac

 

[AncientMariner]

are all those plants just in the background picture?

No, there are 4 fake plants behind the 3 pieces of bogwood.


Have you tried a photoperiod? This is where you turn off the lights during the middle of the day so that algae can't get hold as well. You use a timer to turn the lights on for five hours, off for two, and then on for another five. It has helped algae a bit, because in the past, i've had to clean the glass every third or fourth day.

To be honest 5 days a week the lights are on from 5.15pm till bedtime, say 11pm.

& at a weekend they tend to be on 9am till 11pm