After having silk plants for so long I have decided to take the plunge and add real plants back into my tank. The light I have is a std T8 tube (can't remember the make but it's noting great) and I was wondering if these "grow tubes" are any good? Also what adatives are recommended?
Lights, Plants... Err Action?
- Thread starter wilsonian
- Start date
Get Ready! 🐠 It's time for the....
🏆 Click to enter! 🏆
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Wilson, at this stage in your plant learning I'd concentrate on getting some hands-on experience with how the basics of light, nutritents (including carbon) and algae all interplay. The spectrum of light colors could be thought of as an aesthetic choice at this point. Instead, think about how many watts your T8 is and what watts per US gallon that gives you, which will determine whether you fall into the "low-light approach" or "high-tech approach." (the members will guide you as you post up this stuff hopefully)
Light is like the gas-peddle that sends the planted tank truck flying around the mountain roads.. definately dangerous driving too fast (uses up all your nutrients too quickly!) And those nutrients, they're important! Take a look at the pinned topics. There's this wonderful called EI you may have read about - you dose fertilizers that you determine will give you all the many nutrients and they all get overdosed by a little during the week but then the water change at the weekend takes out the excess and resets you so that there are not excess buildups.
Turns out though that one of those nutrients, Carbon, is a bit trickier. Its key and plants need a lot of it because its the backbone of the sugar molecules that daily carry energy out to all their cells which are working hard in the swath of light you are shining on them. Unfortunately, water doesn't naturally and easily carry as much carbon as we'd like in growing our beautiful green tanks. So there are three methods extant of pumping some extra carbon in there: pressurized bubbling of CO2 (the top method), DIY (do it yourself fermentation to create CO2, an ultimately fussy way), and buying a fancy carbon chemical in bottles (more expensive in the long run of course and also somewhat different from CO2 in what it can accomplish and other details.)
So anyway, light is an area to learn about, fertilizers are an area to learn about, carbon is an area to learn about and when you've got more of that down then you find that it plays into learning about algae avoidance, which is yet another area of planted tanks to learn about. Hope this provides a bit of road map for your trip!
~~waterdrop~~
ps. I wouldn't have gone off on so much stuff when all you asked about was your T8 lightbulb, lol, but plants have this way of keeling over dead on day 4 or 5 if you haven't begun to master a bit of these different topics!
Light is like the gas-peddle that sends the planted tank truck flying around the mountain roads.. definately dangerous driving too fast (uses up all your nutrients too quickly!) And those nutrients, they're important! Take a look at the pinned topics. There's this wonderful called EI you may have read about - you dose fertilizers that you determine will give you all the many nutrients and they all get overdosed by a little during the week but then the water change at the weekend takes out the excess and resets you so that there are not excess buildups.
Turns out though that one of those nutrients, Carbon, is a bit trickier. Its key and plants need a lot of it because its the backbone of the sugar molecules that daily carry energy out to all their cells which are working hard in the swath of light you are shining on them. Unfortunately, water doesn't naturally and easily carry as much carbon as we'd like in growing our beautiful green tanks. So there are three methods extant of pumping some extra carbon in there: pressurized bubbling of CO2 (the top method), DIY (do it yourself fermentation to create CO2, an ultimately fussy way), and buying a fancy carbon chemical in bottles (more expensive in the long run of course and also somewhat different from CO2 in what it can accomplish and other details.)
So anyway, light is an area to learn about, fertilizers are an area to learn about, carbon is an area to learn about and when you've got more of that down then you find that it plays into learning about algae avoidance, which is yet another area of planted tanks to learn about. Hope this provides a bit of road map for your trip!
~~waterdrop~~
ps. I wouldn't have gone off on so much stuff when all you asked about was your T8 lightbulb, lol, but plants have this way of keeling over dead on day 4 or 5 if you haven't begun to master a bit of these different topics!
Similar threads
Most reactions
-
375 -
267 -
214 -
180 -
162 -
150 -
150 -
137 -
124
-
85 -
78 -
75 -
61 -
59 -
58