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Upgrading to real plants

4K views 18 replies 7 participants last post by  Brandon 
#1 ·
Q1. Hey i was desiding to upgrade to real plants soon and wondered if i could put real with fake.

Q2.I just wanted to know if i could use a 30 dollar light from petcetera(for 15 gallon)

Q3. I wanted to do the grassy stuff like in the totm pic and wondered ram if ram cichlid and gold guarami would eat it.

Q2. i wanted to know if i need a bubbler.

Thanks
 
#2 ·
Brandon said:
Q1. Hey i was desiding to upgrade to real plants soon and wondered if i could put real with fake.
Yes.:)
Q2.I just wanted to know if i could use a 30 dollar light from petcetera(for 15 gallon)
What brand and how many watts is it? Fluorescent light tubes are better than incandescent in case the light you chose was incandescent.:)
Q3. I wanted to do the grassy stuff like in the totm pic and wondered ram if ram cichlid and gold guarami would eat it.
No, they won't.:)
Q2. i wanted to know if i need a bubbler.
You can but I prefer doing so only when the tank's lights are switched off. Due to respiration process, the plants compete the fish for oxygen in the dark hence the oxygen supply is easily depleted at night.
Remember though that strong agitation can have dire consequences for the plants. They need CO2 and the lack of CO2 brought by constant stirring of the water surface will easily harm and even kill them.
 
#3 ·
I use air stones on both my tanks with great success. If you plan to add DIY or pressurized CO2 then a bubbler defeats the purpose completely. You may not have much success with airstones in the tank but my plants thrive, well at least the plants in one tank do. I run them all day and night. You will have to see what works for you if you don't plan to inject CO2, If you do plant to inject, then an airstone during the day is going to defeat the purpose and should only be run at night, turn on 30 minutes before lights out and then off 30 minutes before lights on if you can time it that way. If not it really doesn't matter.

As for fake and real, maybe to start with but if you get any descent growth, the real plants to obscure the fake and they will be the spots where algea grows the worst.

For a 15 gallon, you want at least 30 watts to grow plant with a noticeable growth rate. Anything below that will still grow a lot of plants but the choices are a lot more limited.

Grassy, low carpet plants require a LOT of light. For a standard 15 gallon, I would say 50-65 watts to grow them at a rate faster than a snail in winter. I have 33 watts over a standard 10 gallon and can not grow glasso, HC or clover.
 
#4 ·
Just to let you know,
if you happen to have corys or Bristlenose, they are likely to wreck the real plants.
This happened to me and i had to demote my plants status to fake :(
 
#6 ·
fish_4_all said:
Yes both Cories and BN can be a pain but deep rooted plants will work fine. I have both cories and BN in my tanks with plants and it just takes a while for the plants to anchor themselves so the fish won't uproot them. Deep substrate helps too.
The same thing here as well. When I had cories and a BN, I kept avoiding new plants for fear those catfish will try to dislodge them over and over again.:shake:
 
#10 ·
fish_4_all said:
For a 15 gallon, you want at least 30 watts to grow plant with a noticeable growth rate. Anything below that will still grow a lot of plants but the choices are a lot more limited.
That is not completely true. 2 wpg on a 15 gallon tank is medium low lighting. The only carpeting plant I would risk with such low lighting is HC. You would also need some sort of nutrient rich substrate or additive for a carpeting plant since most are heavy root feeders. CO2 would not be necessary for the lighting, but it would be beneficial. The easiest thing to do in that situation is fertilize with Flourish Excel. I don't know for sure, however, what lighting you have at all. Just a little ramble.
 
#11 ·
There are almost no lawn type plants that you will be able to grow under a single T-12 Fluorescent in a 15 gallon tank. If I am thinking about this right, you're talking about an 18 to 20 watt bulb. You need at least 3 watts per gallon of standard flourescent - 45 watts over a 15 gallon tank - to get a good lawn out of dwarf hairgrass or glossostigma or HC or microsword or pygmy chain sword, and you need that plus serious knowhow to do it with riccia. On top of that, if you are going to go over 2 watts per gallon, you will need CO2 of some sort unless you want to grow lots and lots of Back Brush Algae. In fact, unless you get pressurized CO2, you will get some of it.

Also, that bulb with the long thin leaves is probably a thai onion plant, which will eventually grow leaves long enough to cover the tank if not trimmed regularly.

That said, it is pissible to make a java moss lawn with either slate and hairnet, or needlework gridding weighted to the substrate with stones (or a combination of the two) Just lay a single layer of java moss, strand by strand either on a flat rock andkeep it in place with a hairnet (this is the method I use) or lay it out on a needlework grid, lay it moss side down on the gravel, and weight it with stones. The moss will grow through the holes in the gridwork over the course of a month or two.
 
#12 ·
fish_4_all said:
Grassy, low carpet plants require a LOT of light. For a standard 15 gallon, I would say 50-65 watts to grow them at a rate faster than a snail in winter. I have 33 watts over a standard 10 gallon and can not grow glasso, HC or clover.
Had that covered too. :wink:

CO2 may or may not be needed but will help. I have seen tanks with very nice carpets of HC with no Co2 and 4.5 w/g. Don't ask how they do it I couldn't if I tried. As a beginner, if you can afford to do so, I would recommend a pressurized system for CO2, and I say afford to because they run around $300 for the basic setup.

You may have good luck with mosses for a carpet plant. Just going to have to experiment and see what wokrs for you. I don't know anything more about THIS moss but it is quickly becoming a new and very sought after one.

Just really have to start trying different plants. I don't recommend Riccia because it can and will make a huge mess if you don't keep up with it and redo the mats every so often, depending on how fast it grows. I went through 27 different species before I found a group of plants I like and can grow in my tanks with my setup.
 
#14 ·
Brandon said:
So do i have to have Co2 at night? Cause i cant afford that.

Do you?
You may or you may not. CO2 is useless anyway at night especially when the plants use up oxygen instead of CO2 hence this is called respiration process. I run mine even at night though as I can't just try turning on and off the CO2 tank every morning.:mrgreen: But, of course, I run an airpump to prevent the CO2 from accumulating and then killing the fish.:shake:
 
#15 ·
tophat665 said:
That said, it is pissible to make a java moss lawn with either slate and hairnet, or needlework gridding weighted to the substrate with stones (or a combination of the two) Just lay a single layer of java moss, strand by strand either on a flat rock andkeep it in place with a hairnet (this is the method I use) or lay it out on a needlework grid, lay it moss side down on the gravel, and weight it with stones. The moss will grow through the holes in the gridwork over the course of a month or two.
That's a great idea! I was thinking of a moss wall originally, but I think you just changed my mind :D
 
#17 ·
Brandon said:
Thanks im not really following but anyways im thinking on getting new gravle can i get the black shiny pebbles or would you recommend something else. Also can i change the gravel when i do my water change or will i kill my fish?
Something else. I used that in two of my planted tanks, and it's a bit hard to get plants to root in in properly. If yu care to spring for a buck a pound for substrate, get eco-complete or flourite. Next best (and much less expensive) would be Pool sand - inert silica with the right grain size. Cheaper still, get fine pea gravel from your local home despot.
 
#18 ·
Get anything natural in my opinion. The smaller the better althoug I would not recopmmend a fine sand. I don't what pool filter sand looks like as I have yet to find it here so I can't say yes or no there. A fine river run gravel will work fine. Onyx black sand is a course sand that works good, flourite, Eco Complete, Turface MVP now comes in both black and brown, profile aquatic soil, lots of options that are better than any type of epoxy coated/colored gravel you will find in the bags from the LFS.
 
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