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Looking for advice with my planted tank

Darren Carter

Member
Joined
5 Feb 2018
Messages
45
Location
Faringdon Oxfordshire England
Hi guys Looking for advice with my planted tank, I started it up 3 weeks ago with the light on a timer for 6 hours a day, 10am-4pm the tanks doing really well so far all tropica plants as I didn’t want any snails or algee which I had problems with at my local fish store when buying plants so brought them at aqua gardens, I’m using 2ml of George farmers plant food daily and 2ml liquid co2 as it’s a 50l tank 40x40x40, just wondered when I should take the timer up to 8 hours for the light on a day?.
I have ordered some lily pipes for the inlet and outlet on my filter and tank to tidy it up and get rid of the horrible green pipes make it look more realistic, i have read about people using external heaters, do these work I’d love to get one just so there’s no equipment in there really but I have read really bad reviews for them, this will be home to a betta eventually Still unsure about adding shrimp,
Here’s a pic of when it was first started I removed the plants that were in the front to begin with as didn’t like them but I have added a few more etc and it’s been running now three weeks just done a 15ltr water change today
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Tank looks to be coming along nicely :)
but I'd not rush into Changes

Tropica has a 90 Day App (& loads of other useful information on their site) which is an excellent tank start up guide

I'm hesitant on the inline heaters - Hydor is the only available I've seen & smallest they offer is 200watts which doesn't take much to seriously overheat smaller tanks
Aquariums generally fare better with under-rated heaters as temperature drops are much less drastic in regard livestock health & survival

Re photoperiod, few plants require more than 5-6 hours of "good" light per day, anything beyond that tends to be for viewing aesthetics (which after all is a good part of the reason why we have tanks ;)) so take it slow with light increases
You might look at adding a small "moonlight" - I prefer a low watt white LED over the blue's commonly sold as "moonlight"- for afterhours viewing
 
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