[Tkenny]

I'm setting up a 55 gallon freshwater, tropical schooling fish tank that I want to have live plants in. I want the plants to be more of a decoration than the actual reason for the tank. I do want to have them also partially for their filtering effect but I don't want to have a jungle in the tank either. Is there a happy medium between a couple of decorations and a full planted tank? I'm new to the planted tank arena but not to tropical fish keeping. I will probably only have 10-15 fish and several of them being neon tetras (for my daughters) so they will generally be small fish.

I am also considering a small pleco, but based on some of the posts that I have read on here it may not be necessary. I have not had any luck with Cories or Algae eaters and that is why i'm not going that direction.

Any and all replies are greatly appreciated!!

 

[Boredomb]

Hey TKenny don't think I have welcomed ya here soo first off Welcome to TFK!

Second how many plants you want is totally up to you. Its your tank and you will be the one having to take care of it and most importantly looking at it. So if you want a few plants and other stuff like decorations or driftwood or whatever it fine. Do you know what kind of plants you are looking at getting? Also do you know what kind of lights you have? This is important for getting the right kind of plants that will grow for ya.

 

[Tkenny]

I am going to pick up a flourscent tube fixture and have 1 light bulb for full spectrum and 1 bulb for around 6000K. As for what plants, I will probably go with very easy plants like crypts and various other easy, colorful plants. As I am very new to plant keeping and I don't have a lot of money to put into the tank at the moment, they will all be probably low light requiring plants. I will have varying heights and widths throught the tank though. Sorry, i'm being vague at the moment, but I haven't even really had the time to look into many plants yet due to a busy work and training schedule.

 

[Boredomb]

You know the length of the bulbs?? Is it two fixtures or one big one that spans the length of the tank. I had a dual 48 T8 fixture on my 55 and it put me into medium light for plants.

 

[Tkenny]

It's going to be 1 48" fixture with 2 T8 bulbs. 1 full spectrum bulb and 1 6000k bulb. From what I've read that should handle all of the requirements for the fish and the plants.
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[Boredomb]

That's pretty much what I had. I used a Zoo Med Ultra Sun Trichromatic Super Daylight bulb and GE daylight bulb. Later on I used just two GE bulbs as the intensity of the Zoo Med was too bright for my setup. Would get alot of BBA on my plants. Floater helped a lot there but they always had it on them in that tank for me. In your situation it may be different.