Thought My Tank Looked Good Until I Joined This Forum

[strttndrrn]

just down a 50% water change and cleaned the stones this morning.ive just found out the pump heater and light are out of a three foot tank the bulb is 30inch and 750mm. will i def need a bigger pump and light if i want a planted tank.

 

[raptorrex]

Just in defense of Darren, Ive gone through his stocking with him in an other thread and he understands what he needs to do now. Also the U3 filter has about 600 lph or just above which is okay, most of these fish are still juvis and he is in the process of working out what to do with them.

Right now its impossible to gauge how effective the filter will be in the long run as the "catfish" on his list are panasiguis, he has been mis sold them and trying to work out what to do with them. So I think Im right in saying that this stock at present is only temporary.

Wills

lol, many of us started life in fish, with over/incorrectly stocked tanks. i have no axe to grind there.
I meant no offence to the OP. my point was, with that stock, big/regular, water changes are vital, even over the short run. and along with them, gravel cleaning.
from my perspective even, this tank lightly stocked, needs more filtration than the 3+ offers.

 

[rustyspurs]

hi darren, im from ballynahinch and found two great shops in the area, exotic aquatics is just off the castlereagh road in belfast and grosvenor tropicals in lisburn, both have good selection of healthy plants and fish, cheers Paul

 

[OldMan47]

I have just read through your posts and am finding things that may help you understand what is going on.
The first is the light in the tank is very low compared to the needs of most plants. That means that if you don't focus on buying plants well suited to low light, the plants will die. That would be no big deal if you didn't mind losing the money on the plants except for one thing, when a plant starts to decompose in the tank, it produces ammonia.The ammonia spike may well have been why you started losing fish shortly after putting the plants into the tank. There are some plants such as java moss, that would do quite well in such extreme low light but a random plant selection is unlikely to contain many such plants.
The Tank sounds like a 40 long to me, I do have one of those and use a Fluval 4+ in mine. I would expect the 3+ to be a marginally acceptable filter for the tank and do fine with a light fish stocking level. Once you are rid of the fuish that will get to be too big for your tank, including the clown loaches, angels, red tail shark, orange tail shark, silver dollars and the "large sucker", you should be at a low enough load that the fiulter could easily support the remaining stock.

 

[strttndrrn]

cheers for the help. iam going to add a fluvel 2plus filter that i have spare to the tank i was told that will be fine. iam just wondering what light bulb i shoul buy for plants when i get them. can i just buy a bulb and simply just plug it in or will i have to pay big money for a new bulb and generater

 

[OldMan47]

You will need to match your lamp to the ballast in your light fixture. Each fixture has a rating for the particular wattage that it can support and only that size bulb should be used.
The only alternative to increase light amounts in an existing light fixture is to rewire it to accept larger bulbs and then make sure your new bulbs match the new ballast that you have installed. In the US, AHSupply makes kits to help you do that rewiring, and I have used them on 3 of my tanks. What it did was let me replace 30 watts in a 3 foot tank with 110 watts of compact fluorescent lighting for my plants. In another tank I replaced 15 watts of light with 39 watts of compact fluorescent. Each light strip presents its own challenges when it comes to installing custom lighting, but it can be done. An option that I have used on a 4 foot tank is to go buy a fixture like you might use as a shop light in a garage or similar place. It is not very pretty but holds 2 32 watt T-8 bulbs, which gives me 64 watts of T-8 over a 4 foot 40 gallon tank. That is enough light for low to moderate light plants. The next step up for a tank that size would be a twin tube T-5 HO fixture pushing a bit over 100 watts of power. The cost difference between the fixtures can be quite high. That shop light is about 1/4 the price of the T-5 HO where I go to get them. I do have both on different tanks and my plantings reflect that difference.

 

[Honeythorn]

Ive always used basic stock lighting with my tanks and never had any trouble growing most basic low light plants. You simply have to choose plants suited to that light, and there are many easy basic ones that require very little. I don't add any sort of ferts to mine and it's been going 7 years. Here it is currently

The only thing I have in mine is a layer of pond soil under the sand, but since your tank is already running it would be lot of hassle to re-set up so I'd say don't bother with it .

My plants change around pretty frequently as I often give cuttings and offshoots to my friends, brother and nephewwhen I have excess or fancy a change.

You should have a good layer of mulm in your gravel by now, which should get plants off to a good start.

Easy plants to start with include

Cabomba - easy
Elodia - easy
Aponogenton - long and tall, will fill plenty of space when mature
Cryptocoryne - easy
Echinodorus - easy
Java moss - easy, and tie it to your wood or rocks as it does not root in substrate
Moss balls - easiest plant in existance, just drop them in and leave them.
Java fern - easy , and tie to wood or rock same as java moss


If you get some nice long branchy pieces of bogwood, then tie java moss all along the length of it, and allow to grow. This will really brighten things up, and fill some visual space.

Aponogentons are tall and best planted along the back and sides.

In front of the Aponogentons you could put the Echinodorus and Cabomba and Elodia, and the Cryptocorynes down at the front to fill the floorspace.

 

[OldMan47]

You must be growing different Crypts than I am Honeythorn. The largest plant in this picture, going up the back, across the top and down the front, is a Cryptocoryne aponogeton.

The java ferns in the tank are also growing well on the left side tied to some wood. The anacharis/elodea is growing without being set into the substrate and the duckweed is thick enough to shade the entire tank to some degree. I also do not use any ferts in that tank but, by having bright lighting, I can grow the shady area plants in the partial shade that the duckweed provides. The duckweed is food for my rainbow cichlids in another tank and pulls enormous amounts of nitrogen from the tank in the picture.

 

[strttndrrn]

thanks for the help. this might be a stupid question but i have a spare 2 ft bulb and the generater for it if i aded that to the tank would both my bulbs be strong enough for plant groth.

 

[strttndrrn]

i was looking at my light there one is a 30wat 3ft tube bulb and one is a 17 watt 2 foot tube bulb if i put bothe in the tank would that be a strong enough light to help plants grow.

 

[markandhisfish]

a really good place to get bogwood is the well known auction site aka fleabay.