10 gallon planted lighting

hotshotdevil32

I am currently in the process of setting up a central american biotope in a ten gallon aquarium. I am planning on doing Dwarf Sagittaria and Corkscrew Vallisneria in the tank so I don't think I need an insane amount of lighting but I would really like to keep the plants thriving. what kind of fixtures and bulbs do you use on your 10 gallon tanks? I haven't had any luck finding them online.

kafkabeetle

A traditional fluorescent hood (the kind that normally comes with the tank) is fine. I would replace the bulb with a 6,500K (daylight) bulb...these can be found at Wal-Mart or other chain stores for less than $10. No need for anything fancier than that for the species you want in a tank that small. Good luck!

hotshotdevil32

Very cool! Btw do I need a bio Co2 system for the tank? How about additional fertilization?

kafkabeetle

It depends what you want to do. CO2 isn't absolutely necessary, but it can help if it's correctly balanced with your lighting. Personally I just use Flourish Excel, which is a liquid CO2 supplement. I think it's a good option for smaller tanks. I dose it once a day before lights on. Your other options are DIY CO2 or compressed CO2. I don't have much experience with either of those. But you could always do a natural planted tank without any CO2 and a lot of people have luck with it. So you'll have to decide that for yourself.

I dose a macro supplement and a micro supplement in addition to fluorite substrate that has nutrients in it for the stem plants. In my experience the plants do better with these things, but plenty of people use inert substrates and do ok. Since you're trying for a biotope, I assume you already have an idea of what kind of substrate you want (or how you want it to look).

Boredomb

Co2 Is not needed as been mentioned and I definitely won't use it if you just go with the lightening that as been suggested. On the Excel be careful with that stuff. It can cause certain plants to melt such as Vals. If it was me I would just use a well rounded liquid fertz such as Flourish Comprehensive once a week.

hotshotdevil32

Would a Bio-Co2 have any benefits? I would be happy to sell out the money for one if it would the plants happier. I will be sure to pick up some of that flourish comprehensive. on the topic of substrate the tank is going to be a central american biotope with endlers livebearers. they need hard water and since my tap is soft I'm going to need to use argonite sand to keep the little guys happy. Could I put the flourite underneath the argonite sand? Would the sand burn the roots of the plants?

Byron

Having the benefit of your other thread where we have been discussing aragonite, etc., I would not mess with CO2. I don't have CO2 of any sort (except natural from the organics in the substrate) in my tanks and the plants are thriving. Plus CO2 diffusion which is expensive will mess with your water chemistry and here we don't need that.

And for lighting, go less expensive. I use incandescent light (screw-in bulbs as opposed to fluorescent tubes) over my 10g and 20g with two GE 10w CFL (compact fluorescent) daylight bulbs 6500K and the plants growth is superb. The incandescent fixtures are less expensive. And these daylight bulbs render fish and plant colours true. The fluorescent tube with around 6500K woudl do the same of course.

I agree with Boredomb on the Excel, don't use it; and Flourish Comprehensive Supplement once a week should be sufficient.

Byron.

hotshotdevil32

I already have the flourescent fixture for the tank so I will just switch out the bulb. It sounds like for this tank simple is better. So I will get the flourish chemical. Turns out without this website I would have made this tank way more complicated than it needs to be.

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kafkabeetle

Yeah, I wouldn't have even considered the CO2 options if I had known you were already messing around with your ph. It would probably do more harm than good.

fish monger

The daylight fluorescent tubes are working well for me. Extremely reasonable at The Home Depot.