• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Hi newbie in dorset

lori

Seedling
Joined
12 May 2013
Messages
20
Hi,
This is new to me, I have fancy goldfish and have kept tropical fish (plus a pond of koi)
I have a tank and kit which I had hoped to set up as a marine reef aquarium, but we are too far really from a salt water supplier. I popped into webbs of wychbold for a cuppa, and had a wander around their water section and found a planted tank, along with aqua soil and many other things, this made me look at my empty (apart from fluff and dust) tank anew, but then I googled planted aquaria and am even more confused!!!
Just how hard is it to manage one of these?
 
Hi Lori and welcome to the forum.
Well you get out of planted tanks what you put in, there's many ways to achieve the goal, but your in the right place to find out all you need to know.
The basic understandings of light, co2, fertilisation and distribution relationships are primary and there is loads of info in the tutorials section so have a browse through there first to see if it suits.
It's fun creating and looking after a tank, nurturing it and overcoming problems. Good tank husbandry and minimum 50% water changes per week are essential on 'high tech' tanks to keep them running smoothly.
You can go big budget or less expensive, many even use cat litter as an effective substrate and once you've posted 25 times you get access to a sales sub forum which has many members offering plant cuttings and equipment at a fraction of the cost of shop bought plants. There's also the forum sponsors which supply everything you could need.
Once you understand the basic principles behind high tech and low tech approach you can choose a direction to suit.....oh, and good old tap water is just fine for planted tanks :)
Happy browsing.
Cheerio,
Ady
 
Hi Ady

Yes I saw the thing about cat litter, I was a bit concerned about trhe smell of the additives to fragrance it though

I also saw someting about moler clay, which is used for bonsai.

If using these products do you have to use something else over the top?
Also we have lots of rocks from our garden (not huge ones), can these be used in a tank ( Ithing they are limestone, we are on the jurassic coast and some of them have bits of fossil in them.

I think my first step is cleaning out the tank, and buying some new filter media for my filters.
Good to know I can use tap water, but I was surprised at how big the water changes needed to be, is this the same if I put fish in as well?

Thanks

Lori
 
This looks like it will combine flower arranging, gardening and fishkeeping all in one, that should please my husband!!
At least until I find all the things I can't live without.
 
I uaed to do a lot before, I even had my own darkroom, but we moved and I never got round to setting it all up again, so I donated it to the local school. :happy:
 
Back
Top