I have 2 spare 2.5g tanks lying around and would like to make a small planted tank out of one of them. So here goes the questions:

1. I want to use Eco-Complete, but will there be any problems of me opening the bag and only using a little of it for my tank and then leaving the rest in the bag for a later date? Or is it once opened you must use? What is the shelf life of an opened bag? Do I rinse Eco-Complete before use?

2. Would it be a problem to keep Brazillian Micro Sword (Lilaeopsis brasiliensis)? No other plants really interest me other than glosso and riccia. Maybe some moss on a small piece of driftwood. I want to keep plants that don't grow tall... When the plants overgrow the tank, I plan to move them to a larger one later. I am in the works planning a tank with live plants for my red eye crocodile skinks, but in the meantime I would like to keep a small planted tank.

3. What lighting should I get for such a small tank? Wattage? Mounting light?

4. What supplements will the tank need? What test kits other than the basic ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and pH? Can a tank this small need CO2 injection?

5. Not holding my breath, but is there any fish that would be okay in a tank this size? Guppy, white cloud minnow, cory, otto, etc??? I was thinking dwarf puffer, but I don't want snails in the tank... Maybe 2 fishes if possible, but like I said, I am not holding my breath.

6. Am I forgetting about anything very important when it comes to keeping a planted tank? It's been so long for me I don't remember everything.

Some background on me: I have been keeping aquariums for years. Mostly fw fish only tanks. For the past 3 months I have been also keeping nano sw tanks. Many years ago I maintained a 150g fully planted tank with community fish. So I am not a complete noob, just need a refresher and help with newer products available.

No one wants to answer? I got a few views...and I guess no one has a comment or help to offer...

1. IMO, there is no real shelf life. Ignore the biologically active part of the product. You don't need to rinse at all.


2. There should be no problem with those plants that I can forsee.

3. I would personally look at something like a 1x13watt PC.

4. With a tank this size, running the complete fourish line will be cheap. That is what I'd do atleast. For CO2, use flourish excel. CO2 will probably be hard to stablize. I have been told by another that they had excellent results with 100% flourish line, but fourish line and CO2 produced bad results.

5. You can probably get away with a white cloud, or perhaps a scarlet badis (dario dario). No reason you can't have a cherry shrimp tank

6. LOAD UP the tank with fast growers for about the first month, then slowly remove and transition to your normal plants. This tends to overcome the nasty algae phase.

Tony's pretty much covered everything, but I just thought that I'd add a few points...

I've kept white clouds in a Eclipse System Three and they just didn't belong in there. They like to zip around and I really think they shouldn't go in anything smaller than maybe a 20-gallon. I keep guppies in my tiny tanks, but I've been trying to get my hands on some Heterandria formosa because they can take low temps. Recently, I decided to go heaterless in my 2.5-gallon and 4-gallon planted tanks. The guppies are okay in them, but I may change my tune come winter time. Actually, shrimp (as Tony suggested) would be perfect for a heaterless tank because most of them prefer lower temperatures, anyway.

Speaking of low temps, I'm finding that this and keeping the filter off are really helping to keep CO2 (from DIY generator) dissolved in the water. Since I unplugged the filter, I've seen lots of pearling and fast growth. I turn on the filter for only a few minutes every day when I dose the ferts.

I'm actually having pretty good results with my 8W normal-output fluorescent strip light (All-Glass). I also got the most expensive bulb for it - Hagen Power-Glo and is supposedly 18,000K. It's really pleasing to the eye, but I do have some problems with algae. If you have algae-eating shrimp in the tank, it may not be a problem at all. You can grow almost anything with this light.

Well, good luck with your 2.5-gallon tank!

-Naomi