Setting Up A Planted Aquarium For The First Time

[LittleTinca]

Hi everyone,
 
I've been fishkeeping for around 12 years but surprisingly I've never had a planted aquarium. I know the majority of people prefer real plants to artificial ones but with the right imagination you can still do some impressive things with plastic plants & this has always been good enough for me!
 
Where I live I can get plants quite cheap & I like the majority of plants I've seen. The problem is, I've been researching plants on the general web & some previous topics on here & there is a lot of conflicting information out there.
 
The tank I plan on turning into a planted one is a 3ft community tank which currently has a sand substrate & houses Neons, Guppies, Platies, Cory's & Plecs. My light is on for around 6 hours per day when I'm home from work & I really make the effort to keep my tank in tip top condition.
 
If anyone could please give me some pointers as to where to start here I would really appreciate it. Do I need to take my fish out until the plants are settled? Do they require any specific water conditions? Is it essential to have a source of CO2 in the tank? Can you not keep certain plants with other ones because of condition requirements?
 
I'm just trying to do this properly
 
Luke

 

[kiwifeather]

Hi there, good on you for having a go at planted! They look so much nicer and the fish really appreciate them. You don't need to do any fancy high tech setups with light and CO2 if you choose low light easy growing plants. It depends how far you want to go with your planted tank and what plants you are looking at getting. I have a low tech low light set up and all my plants have done just fine. It's not as fancy looking as some of the more high tech set ups but it looks just fine to me.
I'm not the most experienced with plants because of this (I just popped them in, added some liquid ferts once a week and away they've gone), so I'll leave someone with more experience to give you a better run down of more advanced stuff.

 

[frapadoodle]

Congrats on making the jump to live plants.
Until the plants get rooted the corys may dig them up, and even after they are rooted Plecos have tendacy to redecorate as they wish.

Start with the easy plants, swords, anubius, crypts, most stems, (anacharis, bacopa, wisteria, caboma) and you should have no problems. I usually acclimate plants the same as I do fish.
I have low light, no CO2, and dose liquid ferts.

 

[LittleTinca]

Thanks for the advice guys! One other question I have is how do I go about cleanings tank with the real plants? At the moment once a week I take all decor out of my tank & gravel vac. I'm assuming this won't be possible with real plants. I've always wondered how people go about removing waste with such heavily planted aquariums!

 

[frapadoodle]

As best one can. I vac around the plants as best I can, but what is left is used by the plants as ferts.