Hello, I have had fish tanks for about 15 years but only recently tried to foray into the planted aquarium. I'm having a lot of difficulty getting a healthy planted tank going so I could use some advice! I started with half a dozen plants and a home-made yeast reactor which worked pretty well, so I moved up to a carbo-plus unit along with 5 or 6 sword plants, a few wrendii, 3 banana plants, and a couple others whose names I now forget. I can tell the carbo-plus unit doesn't provide even a quarter the CO2 these guys need because the only plants that grow at all are the ones immediately surrounding the unit, and the tank is completely overtaken by green hair algea, and of course worst of all, the plants are not healthy. So, I want to get a CO2 system - however in trying to research what I should get, I find it so confusing that I'm afraid I'll easily waste hundreds of dollars before I get it right.
Hoping to avoid wasting any money-here I am. I don't really have a spending limit, as long as I get a good value. I'm looking for a fully automatic system that will be as maintenance free as possible.
What I have now: The tank is a 92 gallon bow front with a canister filter. The substrate is Seachem Flourite about 3 to 3.5 inches deep. Outside of the plants mentioned above (which have all somehow managed to stay alive), I also have 3 clown loaches about 3 inches long each, a 3-inch koolie loach, another loach of some type which is about 5 inches, 2 corydoras about 1.5 inches each, a 1-inch bumblebee fish, 2 chinese algea eaters, a 6-inch plecostamous, 2 2-inch columbian (blue/red) tetras, 3 2-inch rams whose name escapes me at the moment, 5 3/4-inch rasboras, and 8 1.5-inch cardinal tetras. I have a UV sterlizer and a 4-bulb light on top so more than enough lighting (only using two bulbs at the moment to keep the algea under control). I keep the water at roughly 6.5 PH which is a compromise between the 7.0 the plants want and the 6.0 the discus want that I would get if I could ever get the tank healthy. The water is pretty soft as it comes out of the tap, and I keep it at about 78 degrees. I also fertilize once a week with micro nutrients (which doesn't seem to have any affect either on the algea or the plants).
So the question is-what's the best low maintenance CO2 system I could get for the money, and are there any other suggestions for my setup that would increase my chances of success with my plants?
Thanks for your help!
Hoping to avoid wasting any money-here I am. I don't really have a spending limit, as long as I get a good value. I'm looking for a fully automatic system that will be as maintenance free as possible.
What I have now: The tank is a 92 gallon bow front with a canister filter. The substrate is Seachem Flourite about 3 to 3.5 inches deep. Outside of the plants mentioned above (which have all somehow managed to stay alive), I also have 3 clown loaches about 3 inches long each, a 3-inch koolie loach, another loach of some type which is about 5 inches, 2 corydoras about 1.5 inches each, a 1-inch bumblebee fish, 2 chinese algea eaters, a 6-inch plecostamous, 2 2-inch columbian (blue/red) tetras, 3 2-inch rams whose name escapes me at the moment, 5 3/4-inch rasboras, and 8 1.5-inch cardinal tetras. I have a UV sterlizer and a 4-bulb light on top so more than enough lighting (only using two bulbs at the moment to keep the algea under control). I keep the water at roughly 6.5 PH which is a compromise between the 7.0 the plants want and the 6.0 the discus want that I would get if I could ever get the tank healthy. The water is pretty soft as it comes out of the tap, and I keep it at about 78 degrees. I also fertilize once a week with micro nutrients (which doesn't seem to have any affect either on the algea or the plants).
So the question is-what's the best low maintenance CO2 system I could get for the money, and are there any other suggestions for my setup that would increase my chances of success with my plants?
Thanks for your help!