I Bought My First Plant!

[MegTheFish]

So I've always wanted to have a go at live plants, but always had incandescent lighting. Well I bought a 55 gallon and it has flourescent lighting, and is currently fishless cycling, and I wanted to add something to it, so I bought a (live) plant! There are only two fishstores here (one that I work at, doesn't have plants) so I didn't have much selection but the other store had two tanks full of plants and it looked really nice. Talked to the owner and told her my situation, she said to either go with the...crypts (sp?) or the valls (the name was longer then that but can't remember). So I bought a crypt, just wanted to try out one plant because knowing me I'll end up killing it (and at $8.99 CND a plant I didn't want to buy too many just yet). I also bought these plant tabs, it said use one per 5 gallons, but I just put 3 around the plant because I didn't think I would need that many since I only have one plant (am I wrong?). She said just go with these at first and if you want to buy more plants and have an actually planted tank then we'll talk about other stuff that I'll need (is that a good thing, lol) So...a few questions.
I have sand as a substrate, will this present a problem?
How long should I leave the lights on?
Is my lighting ok? Its just simple flourescent bulbs that came with the kit, nothing special or high-tec.
Will the lighting be enough, for in the future, if I decide to buy more of these crypts and possibly the valls?

Thanks for ANY help at all, I am a total newb at this, wanted to try something new!

Edit: oh yah, thers this bit of spongie moss type thingy wrapped around the lower part of the plant, and the roots are hanging out the bottom. She said to keep this on, is that ok? And should I completley burry the roots in the sand?

 

[jayjay]

sand substrate as long as it's not to fine should be ok.

people leave there lights on for different amounts of time, i'd say 10hours would be enough.

what watt is the light?

crypts and vallis are fairly easy plants i think vallis perfer hard water.

you should bury the roots completely in the sand, i take off the sponge pieces but unsure if that's what your meant to do?

 

[BigIan]

get rid of the sponge/fiberglass as that won`t do you fish any favours,

crypts and vallis are very hard to kill, i`d also recomend amazon sword and java fern...


the lighting will be enough for all the plants named above plus many more (i`m sure you can ask again if you do want more plants) they are all very easy to grow they do well without ferts but do even better with them,


have fun, any more questions i didn``t answer?

 

[MegTheFish]

sand substrate as long as it's not to fine should be ok.

people leave there lights on for different amounts of time, i'd say 10hours would be enough.

what watt is the light?

crypts and vallis are fairly easy plants i think vallis perfer hard water.

you should bury the roots completely in the sand, i take off the sponge pieces but unsure if that's what your meant to do?

The sand is play sand and I got it from two different places, one sand is kind of fine, and the other sand is very course and has lots of larger sized grains in it, so I think it should be ok (I mixed them together, used more of the course sand though)?

Since there's lots of natural light getting into the room, and hitting the tank, could I leave it on for less then 10 hours?

I have two lights, one on either end (55 gallons come with 2 canopys) and it says they are each 15 watts.

get rid of the sponge/fiberglass as that won`t do you fish any favours,

crypts and vallis are very hard to kill, i`d also recomend amazon sword and java fern...


the lighting will be enough for all the plants named above plus many more (i`m sure you can ask again if you do want more plants) they are all very easy to grow they do well without ferts but do even better with them,

There's actually no fish in there at the moment, but I'll get rid of it anyways because it looks really ugly! LoL
She didn't have amazon sword or java fern, all she had for "easy" plants was the crypts and vallis, all the rest needing better lighting she said. The plants were really neat looking, one had a lilly pad going up to the the surface. She had a betta in each of these tanks and they looked really happy. She also threw any fry that she collected from the other tanks into there, where they grew pretty quickly! OH and there were also snails in these tanks...she called them pest snails and she had clown loaches in each tank trying to get rid of them...so I might have snails. Which I've heard is a bad thing but I don't really mind snails and as long as I don't overfeed the fish I should be fine....right? LoL
Ok sorry I'm babbling on...back to the plants. I'll ask her in she can order in some amazon sword and java fern for me as they seem like quite the popular plant and easy to grow

Thanks for all the information, both of you!

 

[jayjay]

30w isn't alot of a 55g

the snails can only live off however much algae or uneaten food etc. there is in the tank so if you keep it down there numbers shouldn't get out of control.

i'd say leave the lights on for 10hours a day but you could get away with less.