Out Of All These Plants....

[Infidel_Uk]

im going to try some plants in a low salinty brackish set up, temp is 26.1c

can anyone advise what might grow well with NO c02 and good t5 twin lights ?

substrate is a mix of gravel and sand , its a 40 gal with 6 bb gobys and 5 horned nerites

Java moss , Java fern , vallis , Sagittaria , hair-grass , water sprite , bacopa , annubia

can anyone advise me what might do well , as in , not loads of algea growth on the actual plant itself , i dont care if it dont grow , as long as it dont die off right away .

currently the tank is FW but i will soon be changing that , as soon as i add my 2 , or even 3 f8 puffs....

thanks a lot guys, your help IS appreciated.

please note, i am NOT an expert, i may have worded things badly, but im hoping you get a good idea of what im trying to say here .....

 

[iliveinazoo]

Each tank is slightly different due to minerals within your tap water, the food that you feed your fish, the waste produced by your fish and lots of other variables but i will try to help based on my experiences and from information that i have sucked up over the last couple of years while trying to establish a healthy planted brackish tank.

I had these plants (from your list) while using no carbon or ferts at SG1.005ish, 25degC:

Java fern = healthy
Java moss = healthy
vallis = not too bad, longer leaves died off and only short leaves remained.
bacopa monnieri = healthy but leaves near the bottom of the plant died off making the plant look a bit scraggly.
annubias bar nana (spellling?) = slowly died but this might be because i planted the roots in the substrate at first and the plant never recovered after re-planting.

with this set up i suffered with algae problems.

Plants from your list while using carbon and ferts at SG1.003ish with the occassional fluctuation to SG1.005ish, 25degC:

Java fern = healthy, and growth improved.
Java moss = healthy, and growth improved.
vallis = healthy, and growth improved.
bacopa monnieri = healthy, and growth improved.
water Sprite = healthy and good growth

algae problems almost eradicated.

The thing is is if your plants aren't growing very much then you will get algae.

There is a relationship between light, carbon/CO2 and ferts. I don't know what your watts per USG are but if you have high light then your plants may require more CO2 and ferts than your livestock can deliver and your plants will suffer.

have a look at the stickies in the planted tank section of this forum, all of the rules that apply to freshwater tanks apply to brackish tanks if not more so.

If you wish to go down the no CO2/carbon, no ferts route then it stands to reason that you should have a low light level and use plants that are known not to require much light, then your plants will grow much slower but you are less likely to have plants dying off due to nutrient defficiencies.

i am not very good at explaining myslef but i hope this helps!

oh - consider apogenoton crispus (spelling?), this looks really good, did relatively well in my no ferts or carbon/CO2 days and is growing like crazy now.

 

[Infidel_Uk]

thanks fella, ill have to have a good think now as to what im going to do and how im going to proceed..

 

[iliveinazoo]

thanks fella, ill have to have a good think now as to what im going to do and how im going to proceed..

Sorry bud, I don't mean to scare you off, I just thought that I'd share my experiences and what works for me. Plenty of people go for the El Natural style and it works for them I just couldn't get it to work for me.

I've chosen to dose easycarbo daily and a macro and micro fert mix almost every other day because my plants grow well and keep the algae at bay, my puffers won't tolerate any inverts so I don't have any other way to combat algae - and I hate scraping!!

I can't find much info at the moment on El Natural (Diana Walsted) or low tech (Tom Barr) styles but it's basically low maintenance with low light (probably 1Watt perUSG or lower). Try your hand with whatever style you like but keep in mind that most plant die off (after initial die off from being placed in the tank) is because of a nutrient defficiency - either there isn't much nutrients (NPK) in the water or they are having a hard time absorbing them - which is where CO2 or carbon comes in.

That many nerites will probably keep your tank clear of algae anyway!

 

[Infidel_Uk]

yeh , its not algae that bothers me , i do a 60% change every week as well, and in fact i might even take out the few plants i do have and stick to pretend ones , its not plants i want to keep , its fish !

and of course the hard part is the water, fish keeping is easy , lol

i have hairgrass , one anubia some vallis and another plant i cant think of the name right now .

lightings not a problem i have 4 t5 bulbs all rated at 36watts .

soon ill be adding 2 f8 puffs so the nerites will soon be on the dinner menu, lol

in fact , what im going to do is go ahead and get the f8 puffs, wave bye bye to the nerites , i gave 3 away already , maybe the 2 will survive? who knows

then later start rasing the salinity , see what happens to the plants , i guess its different for all of us eh

 

[iliveinazoo]

yeh , its not algae that bothers me , i do a 60% change every week as well, and in fact i might even take out the few plants i do have and stick to pretend ones , its not plants i want to keep , its fish !

and of course the hard part is the water, fish keeping is easy , lol

i have hairgrass , one anubia some vallis and another plant i cant think of the name right now .

lightings not a problem i have 4 t5 bulbs all rated at 36watts .

soon ill be adding 2 f8 puffs so the nerites will soon be on the dinner menu, lol

in fact , what im going to do is go ahead and get the f8 puffs, wave bye bye to the nerites , i gave 3 away already , maybe the 2 will survive? who knows

then later start rasing the salinity , see what happens to the plants , i guess its different for all of us eh

Nah, don't rip out the plants they help keep the water clean and provide entertainment for your fish, leave them in and see how it goes, as I said keeping healthy plants depends on a lot of variables and you might just find that your tank doesn't need any additional help.

Some people's figure 8's don't bother their nerites so you might be lucky,

 

[Infidel_Uk]

well the nerites are the horned ones , also they tend to live on the backing board , one is constantly on top of the other, almost getting a free ride, lol

im not 100% sure im going to get the f8`s at all , but if i do add anymore fish , it will be them

in just one day the annubia has already started shooting new roots from the tips of the old exposed roots, if only hair thin...