Should I bother with CO2 injection?

[Dave B]

I have a 60x18x28 110 gallon tank that houses my eartheaters. So by design it has a lot of exposed sand and just some clumps of swords, as well as java fern and anubias. So nothing too special or complicated. I have the ability to crank the light to 3wpg if I want but have just been running 150w since setting it up.

The plants are doing OK, with slow growth and little algae. It has been 2 months but I only just started occasionally dosing ferts (2x a week the EI dose for a 40-60g tank) because I noticed an anubias yellowing. I had some swords die off but that was due to the light burning them... Since pruning all that off the rest is looking fine. They seem to be doing better than when they were in my 55 with more light and roughly the same ferts (but no CO2).

A while back, before I set up the tank I bought a 20lb CO2 canister and a nice regulator/bubble counter/reactor setup. But I got distracted and never set it up, plus no matter how much I read here I'm always nervous that I'm going to screw something up and kill my fish.

I don't really plan to add any more plants (unless people have suggestions on a good way to hide more of the blue background with something simple that looks good) but I obviously wouldn't mind more growth... but the fish will always be the focus of the tank. If all I have are these basic plants, should I even bother setting up the CO2? Or should I just sell it and use excel instead?

(FWIW, there's a photo here from a thread I started a while back and then forgot about.)

[SpeedEuphoria]

My experience with Excel was that it deff helps against algae but not much for the plants.

If your happy with the current plants then just get some Excel to help with algae and maybe help the plants a little.

If you want more growth then CO2 hands down

[LiquidEric]

If you have the CO2 gear the plants will grow faster. keep the bubble count not to high if you are worried about the fish and maybe up the ferts a bit unless you are bad about water changes(in case the ferts would build up)

[Dave B]

I'm always on top of water changes, so that wouldn't be a problem. It has an overflow and sump, which complicates things with the CO2 amount (I haven't set any of that up either yet, I taped off the overflow and just have an Eheim running til I get new bulkheads). Will the swords just grow out of control if I hit a nice balance of light, CO2, and ferts? I guess that's a good problem to have, but I don't need anything crazy.

BTW I'm totally open to aquascaping ideas based on that photo if anyone has any. I like the centralized clump theme but at the same time would love to cover that big blue background. I guess if I had CO2 and crazy sword growth that'd be all it would take to hide it all.

I may also buy an RO unit since the geos prefer softer water... yet another thing to factor in. This is why I end up nervous about screwing things up with the CO2, I think I overthink it all. I guess that's not entirely relevant, but figured I'd mention it.

[lauraleellbp]

Considered Vals for the background? They should do pretty well with your setup.

[Dave B]

I'd have to see a picture of a tank with both tall vals and tall swords, cause in my mind they don't mix together well. But yeah, that's definitely the easiest solution.

Maybe I could shift away from the central clump to a wider look with the swords covering the back on one side and the vals on the other. I'd probably need to inject the CO2 to go that route though, to ensure that I got half a tank's worth of tall enough swords.

I have always loved the look of this. If not for the stupid centered overflow I could totally see myself making the 5 foot long version of that. I like how it still leaves plenty of open sandy space in front.

Last night I decided to turn on one 65w 10000k bulb and it really makes the plants look a lot brighter and healthier (the 150w I run are all 9325k - the fish look best in that). It's half of a 2x65 with one end burnt out, so it's only running on the right side, over the tall swords. I wonder if that extra 65w will lead to any problems with algae, or a significantly greater demand for ferts. (The problem with just experimenting is that if I do end up with algae all over them, I eventually have to trim them, and then I'll be out of tall leaves because the slow growth won't have the new ones caught up.) Now I'm starting to lean back towards setting this all up...

[seandelevan]

Its possible to kill your fish with CO2 but I have found its real hard to do, unless your really really careless.

[doodle1800]

get rid of the cat...

haaaaaaaa