Plant Advice Please

[VickiandKev]

I used to have a lovely planted tank and I adored it, but then I upgraded and never got around to properly aqua-scaping and planting my 6ft tank.

Now, I'm building a breeding setup for plecos with three 2ft x 2ft, three 3ft x 2ft and three 6ft x 2ft, all tanks 12 inches deep.
I'm also going to then be building a 10ft x 3ft x 18inch high tank for my living room.

I'm going for a natural look and feel for my fish in all of my tanks, but most of my fish/species like subdued lighting and most will eat my plants if they're too juicy. I'm keeping plecs of all different sizes, all herbivorous, and in my big tank there are clown loaches which like to punch holes in my amazon sword and java fern!

So, my list so far consists of anubias .... as I know these grow well in low light, and the fish don't touch them generally.

I was wondering if people could either suggest some fast-growing hardy plants (already have cambomba and something else which looks like pondweed) or some hardy, low-light, low-maintenance plants that could be grown on bogwood.

These tanks will be packed to the rafters with bogwood so anything that will grow on wood is ideal.

I probably will fertilise my big tank religiously, but not the other breeding setup tanks so it does need to be plants that will live (they don't need to flourish and grow fast, just live happily and plod along) in my other tanks.

Lighting will be 2 x 54W T5 for my 6fts, 1/2 x39W for my 3fts and 1/2 x 24W for my 2fts.

 

[RadaR]

So just to clarify-
Each of your 6ft tanks will get 2x54W of t5
Each of your 3ft tanks will get either 1x or 2x 39W of t5
Each of your 2ft tanks will get x1 or 2x 24W of t5

Is that right? And all the tanks are only 12inches in height? Or is that 12inches in width?

If so, then that's a lot of light for just low-light plants with no additional CO2 input.
All that light without CO2 will just create algae farms.

On the 6ft tank I'd have 2x39W of t5.
On the 3fts I'd have 1x24W of t5.
On the 2fts I'd have 1x18W of t8.

Less light = less demand for CO2 and less demand for nutrients.

Good plants include hornwort, ludwigia, anubias, ambulia, hygrophila, crypts, amazon swords, aponageton. Every aquatic plant available to us is capeable of obtaining nutrients through it's leave just as good as it is at abosorbing nutrients through it's roots. Therefore all the plants could be tied to wood and exist quite happily.

 

[Twinklecaz]

Can you add CO2 to the water in a liquid form? Rather than using the expensive CO2 thingys you all talk about that I don't really understand lol.

 

[Ben M]

hi, i think for that amount of tanks of such a big size it could get very expensive using liquid carbon. but then the co2 would be more expensive as well. maybe you could have most of them low tech with no co2 and only a couple higher tech with co2.

cheers

 

[VickiandKev]

So just to clarify-
Each of your 6ft tanks will get 2x54W of t5
Each of your 3ft tanks will get either 1x or 2x 39W of t5
Each of your 2ft tanks will get x1 or 2x 24W of t5

Is that right? And all the tanks are only 12inches in height? Or is that 12inches in width?

If so, then that's a lot of light for just low-light plants with no additional CO2 input.
All that light without CO2 will just create algae farms.

On the 6ft tank I'd have 2x39W of t5.
On the 3fts I'd have 1x24W of t5.
On the 2fts I'd have 1x18W of t8.

Less light = less demand for CO2 and less demand for nutrients.

Good plants include hornwort, ludwigia, anubias, ambulia, hygrophila, crypts, amazon swords, aponageton. Every aquatic plant available to us is capeable of obtaining nutrients through it's leave just as good as it is at abosorbing nutrients through it's roots. Therefore all the plants could be tied to wood and exist quite happily.

Thank you for that advice - I put those lights into an online calculator and it seemed to suggest that those were incredibly low light levels!
The tanks are 12inches in height and 2 feet in width.

It would certainly save me money if I could have less light though on each tank. The algae wouldn't be a big problem as I'm intended to raise algae-eating plecos in these tanks - but obviously, there has to be a balance - there can't be too much algae really.

That's good to know about the plants too - so I will look them up and order those plants you suggest and try out tying them onto wood and putting them in those tanks.


Pest control - you're right about the liquid carbon - it would be pricey I think!

 

[RadaR]

So just to clarify-
Each of your 6ft tanks will get 2x54W of t5
Each of your 3ft tanks will get either 1x or 2x 39W of t5
Each of your 2ft tanks will get x1 or 2x 24W of t5

Is that right? And all the tanks are only 12inches in height? Or is that 12inches in width?

If so, then that's a lot of light for just low-light plants with no additional CO2 input.
All that light without CO2 will just create algae farms.

On the 6ft tank I'd have 2x39W of t5.
On the 3fts I'd have 1x24W of t5.
On the 2fts I'd have 1x18W of t8.

Less light = less demand for CO2 and less demand for nutrients.

Good plants include hornwort, ludwigia, anubias, ambulia, hygrophila, crypts, amazon swords, aponageton. Every aquatic plant available to us is capeable of obtaining nutrients through it's leave just as good as it is at abosorbing nutrients through it's roots. Therefore all the plants could be tied to wood and exist quite happily.

Thank you for that advice - I put those lights into an online calculator and it seemed to suggest that those were incredibly low light levels!

I doubt the calculator took into considerartion that the bulbs were t5 and that the tanks were only 12inches high (not a large distance for light to to, therefore the light would be intense).
t5s are also very intense, almost double t8s.

 

[VickiandKev]

I have ordered a selection of those plants that I really like, I have also ordered 60kg of bogwood so will trying out every single plant on bogwood I think, as this would be easier for me - otherwise there comes a time when my plants simply get crushed by me moving bogwood around and not being careful. Also think they're less likely to get grazed on by the big plecos if they're on bogwood!