Thinking About Starting A Planted Tank Again

[xxBarneyxx]

I had a pretty successful 30g hi-tech planted tank about 3 years ago which I tore down to turn into a marine tank. I'm thinking of setting up another planted tank again though after my other halfs mum started keeping tropical's and I remembered how nice a well maintained planted FW tank can be.

The biggest issue I had with my previous planted tank was the cost and the constant maintenance (hi-light, fert dosing with pressurised CO2+ stem plants = daily pruning). If I go for it again I'm going to go for slower growing, lower light species (possible with no CO2 to keep costs down). It will either be a nano tank or at the other extreme a 100g+ tank (looking at an 8footer at the moment but have to convince "the boss" first that we can fit it in our house somewhere ). Either way I'm looking for low cost, low tech and low maintenance.

When I had a planted tank before I used all ADA ferts and substrates which worked great but cost a bomb. The big thing then was EI dosing and high power t5 lighting (2-4wpg) with CO2 injection.

I have been thinking of using hydroponics lights (cheaper to buy, cheaper to run and longer lasting bulbs) and using dry ferts with a commercial trace mixture. Not sure what dosing method to use yet (possibly EI but cant see if this would work on a 100G+ tank as doing weekly large water changes is no going to be possible) but was really wondering if there have been any big advances or changes since I had my last tank.

(Basically I want a planted tank which isn't going to cost a fortune to run and not sure what the best method would be now for either a nano or large tank so any suggestions or good links to recent information would be brilliant ).

 

[RadaR]

Go really low tech.
0.5WPG of t5 lighting with reflector. Or 1WPG of t8 lighting with reflector.
Nutrient rich sediment/substrate such as ADA Aquasoil Amazonia or Oliver Knotts own brand.
No CO2 injection, gas or liquid.
Medium stocked with fish.
2-3 water changes a year.
5 to 10 times the volume of the tank turned over every hour via filters and/or powerheads.
With this sort of lighting, you don't need CO2. Without the addition of CO2 the plants won't demand as much nutrients hence you don't need to dose any into the water column. All the nutrients needed is in the substrate/produced via the fish. The lack of water changes keeps everything stable in the tank and CO2 is allowed to build to a certain level, reaching an equilibrium. If you were to do a water change, then the tap water (which as large levels of dissolved CO2) would cause a large change in CO2 concentration giving algae the upper hand.
If you wanted, you could dose liquid carbon (Easycarbo) which would increase plant growth, but then you would have to perform 25-50% water change per week and also the nutrient demand of the plants would increase.
Beautiful planted tanks can be created with minimal effort, aint life grand

 

[KittyKat]

I've done something similar to what is suggested above, and it works really well (of course, the usual disclaimer applies: don't try it unless you know what you're doing). The other alternative is to go for something in between: medium light, lots of surface movement, medium turnover, low-medium fertilizing, small weekly maintenance (10% w/c).