Fluval Flora Questions....

[Manda0922]

So my husband surprised me today and had a Fluval Flora delivered to the house! I was shocked and am supper excited to set it up!

1. The most certainly to give you enough gravel for a planted tank so I was wondering if it would be ok to get organic planting should to mix with the Stratum or should I just get more Stratum?

2. About how long does the C02 canister last for? And do you just buy replacements from a sports store?

Thanks in advance!

[Soundwav2010]

Congrats,

now for the first question, they say not to mix the stratum, but I did anyways, so I think it's fine, so long you have the potting soil down first. The stratum is quite light weight, but it makes planting easy. The canister should last you anywhere from one to two weeks depending how you fill the bell diffuser-either one chamber full or two. With the provided chamber the one bubble per second does not apply, just fill the chamber and then let it set until it's all dissolved. Anyways back to your second question, I haven't had luck finding any of these chamber at my local fish store nor do the replacement canisters at the sports stores here have them, plus you really can't use the any other co2 canisters as they have to have the correct threading on them.
Hope that answers your questions, and good luck in setting up your aquarium.

[Manda0922]

first off...thank you so Much for answering my questions :-)

second....every week or two seems pretty ridiculous to get a new co2 canister! do people really do that?? Where would I find replacements and how much do they run?

[somewhatshocked]

If I were you, I'd order a bag or two of extra stratum from a forum sponsor or Amazon. It's cheap to obtain. Honestly, I'd order $25 worth via Amazon so you get free shipping. That way you have some extra on-hand.

I have the Ebi and use the shrimp stratum (same thing, smaller granules) and am quite happy with it. Feel free to check it out in my signature.

As far as CO2 goes... my advice would be to use up what came with the system and immediately switch to pressurized if you can afford to do so. A 5lb CO2 cylinder would last quite a while on a tank like that. A 10lb could last you a year or longer, potentially.