Plant growing info
 

Hello freshwater guys. I'm setting up a 33 gal freshwater. I want to try and grow some plants then add fish. So any web sites would be appreciated. I've got lots of lite. About 110 watts over 2.5 ft x1ft sq. surface area. I've never had much luck with growing plants. I live in Coquitlam. I haven't tested the water yet but will shortly.

George

I went and bought a CO2 ladder (bubble counter) made by Nutrafin (Hagen) and set up a DIY CO2 reactor for my 15 gallon tank and the plants grow like crazy!

http://www.hagen.com/img/aquatic/products/a7698.jpg

I set it up with some tubing to a 500ml water bottle (drilled a hole in the top and siliconed the tubing in about 1.5 inches into the cap). Then I fill the bottle about half full of water, put in about 1/4c of sugar, 1/4 tsp of yeast and 1/4 tsp of baking soda. Put the lid on and you're ready to go. It takes a few hours for it to start up and lasts about a week and a half before you have to dump it and make new. I'm sure there are better recipes out there but this one works for me. I have it sitting on my light strip to keep the solution warm and the yeast happy.

You should be able to find it at most pet stores that sell fish stuff :biggrin:

also:

www.plantedtank.net great for info!

Christy :)

look into the PPS system of fertilization: www.aquaticplantcentral.com IMHO it's the best way to do it! :mrgreen: www.plantedtank.net is also a great site i agree and for local FW info. www.bcaquaria.com is a good one.

good luck

hey do you have any problems with the softness of the water? I have been adding PMDD to the tank in massive amounts and I still can't get enuf nutrents in the water to even grow algae. I was thinking of putting a chunk of base rock in to mineralize the water what do you think>

Steve

beats me. I grow algae like stink, freshwater or saltwater. I don't know what my trick is. I just look at the tank and it pops up :wink:

I dose some nitrogen and iron when I remember. Those are the only two I could find around here though.

Christy :)

Oh I got the salt water one mastered :mrgreen:

here is the home made fertalizer I am using.. the problem is it is sucked up so fast I can't put enuf in. http://www.hydroponics.com/info/aquatics/pmdd.htm

so the problem I am having is holes in the plants leaves, on both my hygrostricta and my java fern. I just tore everything out of the tank and cleand the gravel (it had been running 5 years untouch and was messy) bit I find that my TDS of my water is so low it is making it hard to keep any levels up.

Steve

I think holes in leaves is a potassium deficiency. Add more KNO3. As for the PMDD I have no idea. It sounded way to complicated to me. Besides I only have a tiny 15 tank, I don't want the plants growing too fast anyways :wink:

Whats the KH reading of your water? I find that plant tanks are generally easier to take care of if your KH is 4 or more.

When I had my plant tank, I felt the most important need was to have my CO2 consistantly dissolved at about 15-25ppm. Any lower, and the affects could be seen within a couple of days. My plants would stop pearling, algae would start growing, etc. Even on my low light tank, I never stopped injecting CO2... the benefits outweighed the hassle of setting up a CO2 system.
As to getting a CO2 system, as much as it can cost, I'd say, save your time and get/build yourself a pressurized system. Its much easier to handle than bottles of yeast and sugar. In my world, the easier it is to handle, the longer I'm going to stick with it.
Dissolving wise, a more passive system like the one posted above will work for smaller tanks... but after some experimentation, I found that putting it on any tank larger than 20g (depending on surface agitation) was really pushing its outter boundaries. A better alternative would be a sort of active system of dissolving CO2. There are several ways of doing it. Many people inject CO2 into a canister filter because of its ease. Though there is a risk of air locking your filter if you inject too much CO2 at once.

Secondly, I felt that the most important thing was dosing enough KNO3 (in the form of stump remover) to get my nitrates up to a constant 5-10ppm. Everything else I dosed according to feel... a couple drops of phosphates (in the form of fleet enema :redface: ) once a week, a couple capful of flourish trace once or twice a week, and some a little a couple pinches of powered phosphate (in the form of phosphate water softener) once a week. Having a good substrate rich in nutrients was also essential IMO for the success of my plants. I used pure flourite mixed in with detritus from my cichlid tank and only vacuumed areas not occupied by plants. All of my rooted plants flourished, and a few actually sent stalks up through the water's surface and flowered all the time.

Good luck with your plant tank!

-Rich

If you stick to the right plants you can keep it really simple. I have jungle val thriving in my tank and the anubias nana seems to really like the new tank location after the move. I also have an african sword and a couple smaller grass-like plants that are growing quite a bit slower.

I have a couple of those corkscrew fluorescents at about 50 watts total and I occasionally add some Kent fertilizers.

I forgot to mention... if you'd rather not go the CO2 route, and would prefer a simplier method of plant keeping, see if you could get less light on your tank. Maybe get some floating plants to reduce the intensity of light your tank would be exposed to. The previous suggestion of getting slower growing plants such as the various species of anubias plants would be perfect in this sort of setup. You could even get away with no fertillizing even with a light/moderate fish load.

I had a 25g bowfront with a simliar sort of setup for a little while before I added CO2 injection. I had a mat of riccia covering about 50-65% of the water's surface, and a piece of stump-shaped driftwood in the middle of the tank covered in numberous anubias plants. Bioload consisted of one dwarf gourami, and a group of 6 neons. It was a very calm type of tank and was probably my most favourite plant tank to date. Too bad I never got any pictures of it.

-Rich