Plants For A Tropical Aquarium

[oscar52]

Someone recommended I place this here to get some ideas.

Am after a selection of plants for a tropical set up (probably guppies mollies platies neons and some shrimps), tank is bow fronted, 180 litre / 40gallon.

Have had a planted tank before, but wasnt very successful - Cabomba went from a plant to a bush, and natans went from two plants to forty - then died and nitrates went sky high.

I now have better advice, from a better store. Going to keep alot of the old gravel, top that with some fertilizer stuff ( sorry thats a bit vague) and then some more finer gravel. Old filter I have been told to ditch the sponges and put in ammo chips - the white porcelain things which im told would be alot more effective.

Unfortunately, cant afford a CO2 pump at the moment.

 

[saboy]

Yea, the nutrient substrate is what you need, Eco- Complete is what you could go for !

And possibly upgrade you lighting a bit, not over 2wpg though, cause then you need Co2 injection

 

[Graeme Edwards]

Dont worrie about the cost of Co2, you can do DIY with old coke bottle, yeast ,sugar and bicarbinate of soda ,super cheep, only costs you the time mixing realy.

 

[oscar52]

easy on the abbreviations please!!! whats wpg?

The stuff for the substrate is from a company called sera - not sure what it is off hand.

What lighting would you gor for - got two standard 25W tubes at mo. Also, would you also go for refelectors? (can see this costing a little - hope theres OT in work)

As for the CO2, i guess that could be regulated by restriciting the tube. Cant beleieve i didnt think of that myself.


ANYWAY - back to my original point (cos i keep rambling anyway) what plants and how many. I realise its a personal preferance, i just want some opinions of what looks good - people here know much more than me.

 

[Dubby]

For growing a larger variety of plants you will need to up your lighting to achieve around 2watts/gallon. At the moment you seem to have a little over a watt/gallon.

With the lower lights that you have you can still grow plants such as hornwort, elodea, vallis, crypts, anubias, java fern etc. Choose a substrate (I prefer sand) and add a base layer of nutrient rich substrate like laterite, clay or go for one of the more expensive ones like ADA, Eco complete (these can also be used by themselves) etc.

Get sufficient plants to cover more than 1/2 your tank. This will prevent outbreaks of algae. Choose plants of different sizes so you can cover the foreground, mid and background without making a jungle If you're in the UK you can get inexpensive starter plant collections from the likes of Greenline (www.aquaticplants.eu.com) based on your tank size.

And keep us posted on how you get along.