john6
Member
Will be putting plants in in the morning so is it best to have lights out when first planted? and when do i start using the ferts?
There is a huge difference between a CO2 vs a non-CO2 tank. It is the same relative difference between a Formula 1 car vs a farm tractor.Its a non co2 tank
Man I could have used this talk when I was nuking my bacopa.There is a huge difference between a CO2 vs a non-CO2 tank. It is the same relative difference between a Formula 1 car vs a farm tractor.
Although Paulo is correct that plants need light, plants in a non-CO2 tank do not need nearly as much light as most folks seem to think.
There is a lot of confusion about this and you should be very careful about avoiding the use of excessive lighting.
When you first put your plants in the tank and fill it with water you don't really need to worry too much about light or fertilizer. If your plants are coming from a shop then typically they would have been grow as terrestrial plants and their first priority is to adapt to being dumped under water.
Because of this it requires several weeks for them to change their physiology so that they can breathe under water. In fact, gas exchange for newly submerged plants is far more important than light at this point. If you blast the plants with megawatts of light (as so many do) then it is very likely tat they will either start to melt into oblivion rather quickly or the tank will descend into algae hell straight away.
You do not need to worry about nutrition immediately. A non-CO2 tank is very low energy system and the metabolism of the plants is about 1/10th of that in a CO2 injected tank. Growth rates in ow tech tanks are by definition, limited by the poor availability of CO2 in the water, which is often less than 8ppm. Since plants are made primarily of carbon, this poor availability restricts the rate at which they can build tissue. Since the growth rate is limited then the rate at which they consume nutrients is also limited. The tank needs only small amounts of fertilizer once, or perhaps twice a week, so there is no need to fret about nutrients - but there is plenty need to worry about too much light.
Cheers,