[dhgyello04]

Hello,
My co-worker just bought the 8 gallon Bi-Orb tank at PetSmart.
http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=12477702&f=PAD%2FpsNotAvailInUS%2FNo
He has saltwater tanks and one cichlid tank. He has wanted to do a planted tank so he picked this up on clearance. I am helping his take the necessary steps to setting up a planted tank. My questions are as follows:

Which is a good plant substrate for ease and low cost?
Which filter would be good for this tank? (Knowing that it will need to be external due to the shape of the tank)

He wants to rip out the existing UGF that comes with the tank set. I mentioned to him that I have the ZooMed 501 on my 8 gallon Fluval EBI and works great. He is having a problem spending the money for that type of filter. He wants low-tech plants and next to none fertilizers added. Can we help him?

Don

 

[daworldisblack]

How strong are the lights on this? Depending, he can get away with lowlight plants, minimal to no fertilization and perhaps even without a filter. He can't stock the tank with too many fishes though but if the balance is there, the bioload provided by the livestock could be just enough to support the plants. The plants take care of absorbing the nitrates as ferts and the ammonium, nitrate and nitrite levels are kept low as a result. He'd need to manually clean the gravel every now and then to clean up fish poop and dose excel and Seachem equilibrium periodically but should be good. The biggest concern is lighting. If the lighting is too much, then the balance is off so it all depends on that.

 

[dhgyello04]

How strong are the lights on this? Depending, he can get away with lowlight plants, minimal to no fertilization and perhaps even without a filter. He can't stock the tank with too many fishes though but if the balance is there, the bioload provided by the livestock could be just enough to support the plants. The plants take care of absorbing the nitrates as ferts and the ammonium, nitrate and nitrite levels are kept low as a result. He'd need to manually clean the gravel every now and then to clean up fish poop and dose excel and Seachem equilibrium periodically but should be good. The biggest concern is lighting. If the lighting is too much, then the balance is off so it all depends on that.

I don’t know if he is going to change out the lights or just keep them. I do know that he was only going to put maybe 1 Otto, 2-3 small tetras, a couple of ghost shrimp in the tank. He just wanted to mainly keep it a planted tank and not a fish tank or an invertebrate tank.

Does anyone have any pics or friends that have modified this type of tank?