My Planted Aquarium (1st Time)

[Lawrence Ferguson]

Hi All,

I've decided it might be a godo idea to keep a journal of progress so I can maybe get some help, tips or advise as and when needed.

So...Day 1:

I obtained a 64litre fish pod/box tank on ebay for £20. Not ideal lighting but I will be swapping out the blue bulb for a seond white one to give me 2WPG.

I've bought some flora substrate (Tetraplant) which I emptied into the tank yesterday. Not nearly enough, so I will buy another tub tonight. As far as I've read, i should make it at least 2cm?

Once I am happy with this, I have some good sand which I want on top of that. I've also got some rocks I've cleaned and would like to use.

I've bought a filter IN400plus filter. recommending for 40-60l tanks...hopefully this is good enough? (once I'm confident in what I am doing and willing to invest more i willl ook at external ones)

Next steps are this...I need a decent heater? (any recommendations) and what would people go with, a CO2 system or liquid CO2 and if liquid, can anyone recommend one? Can I get one that combines CO2 and fertilizer?

Lots of questions I know! Once I've done the intial set up, I will post some pics! Phew!

 

[Lindy]

Equipment wise I would start as you mean to go on. Flow is really important so you would be better getting a good filter now rather than setting up and getting problems with algae and poor plant health which can be really frustrating.

Good luck.

 

[Claire]

What rating is the filter in litres per hour? The golden number is 10x the tanks volume per hour. This is suggested as it means you are getting a good flow rate to distribute fertilisers and co2 around the tank. I get the feeling that the one you have is going to be well below that the fact that it is only rated for 40-60l tanks. You tend to find that you need to get a filter one or 2 steps up from the recommended size to get the litres per hour.
Heating wise, if you are looking at getting an external filter, also look at getting an external heater. This fit onto the outlet tube of your filter pipe and heat the water as it goes through, meaning that you don't have any sort of hardware in the tank to distract your eye from the fish and plants, which should be the main focal point!
If you want stability in the tank and the best plant growth possible, I would recommend looking into pressuried co2. Fire extinguisher setups are common and the cheapest way of doing it. There is a write-up about them in the tutorials section. You can use liquid co2 if you'd rather to start off with and see how things go. The most commonly used ones are either easycarbo or TNC carbon. Both are the same thing really, but the TNC version works out slightly cheaper. You can get either from fluid sensor online.
Ferts wise, there aren't any ferts that combine co2 as well as the chemicals in the fertilisers end up reacting with the liquid co2.
Which fertiliser you use depends on your priorities. If you just want something easy, then the best option is to buy a complete fertiliser like TNC complete which you dose daily (it says weekly, but it's more beneficial to the plants to divide it up into daily doses) and that's it. If you want something cheaper then you should look into powder dosing. There are ready made powders on the likes of ebay that you just dilute into a litre of water and then dose as per packet instuctions, or cheaper again you can buy your own individual chemical powders and mix up your own fertilisers according to instructions given by online calculators. Fluid sensor also sell the individual chemical powders and they have a really straight forward and easy to understand calculator that you can use to make up your own fertiliser.