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New to planted tanks

591 views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  Hoppy 
#1 ·
I have a 75 gallon deep tank that has contained only Koi fish for the past 2 years. As they are moving to a new and better home this weekend, I have been thinking about starting a planted tank. Over the past 5 years or so, I have tried adding a variety of small plants to my 10 gallon Tetra tank and they have all died; plants not Tetra's.

I guess my initial question is can I jump right in, or do I need to thoroughly clean and start from scratch. Currently the tank has about 3 inches of small aquarium rock with no substrate. I'm assuming I should start from scratch and have plenty of substrate, but sense I don't know I thought I'd put that out there.

The second question is how critically important is a CO2 setup for planted tanks?

As for lighting, I have a 2 bulb 48" T5 set-up I had for a saltwater tank that I was planning on adding in place of the basic hood that came with the tank. Is that sufficient or should that be upgraded as well?
 
#2 ·
i'd almost not clean it, if you've had koi in it for the past two years then it's probably a cycled tank, and i wouldn't undo your cycle by scrubbing all the bacteria away. cycling, IMO is a PITA (acronyms what), and it's always a good idea to reduce it... not that you can't make it easy. but anyways.

wait, "three inches of small aquarium rock", do you mean like gravel on the bottom of the tank? because that is substrate... or do you mean like rocks rocks, like... i dunno, chunks of rock or large pebbles? having trouble visualizing this...
it's probably easier to start with something like soil, or kitty litter, or a made-for-aquariums plant-growing substrate? but you don't HAVE to.

WHICH brings me to your next point- CO2 depends on what plants you want to keep. if you want most stem plants or plants that grow in red, you'll want high lighting, and CO2. the more light you have, the more necessary it is to have CO2. but there are plenty of low light plants you can grow in a "low tech" tank. not that CO2 wouldn't help there, either. i just upgraded my tank to "high tech" (DIY CO2 but whatever), and my plants are already showing improvement.

what's the wattage? it might be too much, if it was for a reef tank. too much light kills plants.

long story short, you don't NEED substrate (you can always have potted plants, or even plants like anubias, java fern, or floating plants that don't need to be rooted in substrate just floating around in the tank), or CO2, but both of those things make life a little bit easier.
i have java fern, anubias, water sprite, and some sort of crypt all growing well in a tank with pure gravel substrate, moderate lighting, and recently- DIY CO2, but i just added that and they were doing mostly fine without it. those are all low-light plants, though. really easy to keep, i'd probably start with them if i were you. the crypt maybe not so much, just because of melting. but the others are great.

i'd look at the stickies on the lighting forum and the plants forum, you could see what plants you want to start with, and what lights would be best for your tank.
also, i don't dose, but fertilizers are probably some of the best things you could do for your plants. the easy way is to buy seachem flourish, or you could get dry mixes online...or even buy chemicals and make your own dry mix. they seem to help A LOT.
 
#4 ·
^+2

My current substrate is pea sized gravel mixed with split pea sized gravel mixed with Schultz Aquatic Soil which is raw rice grain sized or so and the substrate's pore size is that of the SAS, not the pea gravel. If you decide your gravel is too large but you want to use it you can mix it with smaller stuff to fill in the large pores!

The mulm under your current rocks is good stuff, if you do decide to change the substrate leave some water in the tank so lifting the rocks up and out washes mulm off them. Then let the mulm settle to the bottom for a couple hours and drain the tank as far as possible. Add the new stuff and the mulm will mostly be trapped under the new substrate.

That light is probably just right, do check out the sticky. If you set it up so it can be raised and lowered then you can fine tune the light going into the tank. I like putting a layer of window screen and letting floaters cover the surface to reduce light if needed as well.

As well as buying too much light for the tank it is easy to have a lighting period that is too long. A simple timer really helps with that. The other rookie errors are not feeding plants properly from day one and not filling the tank with plants right away. I like to look down into the newly planted tank and not really be able to see the substrate. That is a lot of plants for a 75 gallon tank!
 
#5 ·
Thanks. The Koi are on their way to a friends Koi pond and we wish them the best.

We really haven't decided what plants or or even what fish other than my Tetras to put into the tank. I guess for the time being, we'll keep the tank running as it is cycled and do some research on what we want to put into.

FYI, the rock we have is the typical colored gravel you get at any LFS. If that works with plants then we may just leave well enough alone.
 
#6 ·
Your T5HO light probably has an actinic bulb plus another bulb. I would replace the actinic with a 6500K or 10000K bulb. Then I would suspend the light 6-8 inches above the top of the tank so you don't have high light. You can probably do without CO2, but I would use Seachem Excel to be sure the plants get enough carbon to grow well. And, check the sticky in the fertilizing forum for advice about what else to fertilize with.
 
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