funkman262

I watched the video that was stickied at the top of this forum. I currently have a bunch of plastic plants but am converting to live plants after my 78W light fixture comes in. According to the video, I don't need to buy all the plants that I want. If I just buy a few and let them grow, I can trim them and replant them until I fill the bottom of the tank. Is this an accurate statement? Can you do this with all aquatic plants? Also, will some plants just "spread" on their own? I'm completely new to this and appreciate any help. Thank you

Nutter

Not all aquatic plants can have the trim at the top & replant that section treatment. Save that for plants that have leaves growing of central stems. Some other plants such as Water Sprite, Water Wisteria & Java Fern will have little plantlets form on the leaves. When those plantlets get big enough you just pull them off & plant them. Plants like Cryptocoryne have a rhisome that will have little plants grow of it. The rhisome can be carefull cut to seperate the new plant & then the new plants can be left to grow. There are many different way aquatic plants reproduce & it would be easier if you were to post the type of plants that you are interested in & then I can tell you how to propogate them. It is generally true though that you will need to buy much less plants than you actually want in the tank. It just depends if you have the patience to do the cuttings & let nature take it's course or if you don't have the patience for that & want an instant garden.

funkman262

Thanks Nutter. In general, I'd like to say that I have more patience than money, if you know what I mean . I definately want to start off slow with the live plants since I've already got a lot of plastic plants in there already. I want to learn as I go hopefully not do something wrong and end up killing both the plants and the fish (especially if I decide to use a DIY CO2 system). I researched my fish to determine what plants they prefer and this is what I found:

Cryptocorynes (water trumpet) / similar broad leafed plants
Limnophila aquatica (giant ambulia)
Riccia fluitans (crystalwort)
Ceratopteris thalictroides (water sprite)
Vesicularia dubyana (java moss)
Vallisneria Spiralis (tape grass)

I should be receiving my new T5 78W lighting fixture in the next couple of days and then I'll be going out to purchase some plants. I also ordered a hardness tester because I believe I could use those results with the pH to determine how much CO2 I have in my water. Based on that, I'll determine if I need to inject CO2 or not.

Nutter

Cryptocoryne reproduce naturally. All you need to do is plant one & wait for new plants to start to pop up. Once the new plant is large enough you can just pull it up & snip it off the original plant. Then replant it where you want it.

Ambulia is a stem plant that grows like crazy. With that one you can do the trim at the top & replant that secton.

Riccia will spread across the surface on it's own.

Water Sprite will produce plantlets along the edges of the leaves. Once the plantlets are large enough just pull them off the main leaf gently & replant them or leave them floating.

Java Moss will spread itself.

Vallis will send out runners & new plants will grow from those.

You should have about 4ppm co2 in the tank if there is sufficient surface movement & no co2 injection of any kind. That is what will come in with the oxygen absorbed from the atmosphere. If you start adding co2 gas you will need to minimise surface movement during the day by putting air pumps on timers & having the filter outlet pointed so it doesn't disturb the surface too much. Please note that Flourish Excell (liquid carbon), is not suitable for use with vallis & will cause it to melt & die. Excel is not an option for you with that plant in the tank. Just in case you were considering it.

funkman262

Awesome. I can't wait to get started!

funkman262

Updates:

My new lights came in yesterday and the tank looks SOOO much better now (I couldn't even see the entire tank before with just 15W on a 45g tank). I also just got my KH/GH test kit today and my DKH was 4 (71.6 PPM) and my pH is 7.5 which gives me less than 4ppm of CO2 in my water (so I guess I WILL end up having to run a DIY CO2 system in there). I ordered 45lbs of black flourite sand yesterday so I need to wait for that to come in before I actually get started on this project. In the meantime, I'll continue reading posts about DIY CO2 systems and learn as much as I can about planted tanks so hopefully I'll be able to do it right the first time. If any of you know of informative threads I should read, just paste the links for me. Thanks all

Elodea

Why not browse through the "Aquarium Plants" section of this forum? (It's under More Freshwater Aquarium Topics) Lots of good threads on that.

funkman262

I've already read a lot of those lol and the aquascaping forum as well. I just wasn't sure if anyone knew of a particularly great thread that might be older and harder for me to happen to stumble upon. Thanks for the reply

funkman262

Updates:
I received my Seachem Flourite Black Sand and got it all in the tank.
Here's what it looked like after spending about a half hour rinsing it off:


And after 3 100% water changes and then running the filter for a couple days:


So, I'm currently soaking the plants with some snail-killer chemical. I have 2 batches of __ Sword (the name escapes me right now), an Amazon Sword, Micro Sword (hopefully will carpet for me) and an Anubias:


Based on Nutter's instructions, I've put together a DIY CO2 setup (with check-valves) to be diffused through the filter intake:


I also found a really awesome piece of driftwood while I was out shopping for plants today. In this picture, the tube in the front-right is from the collection bottle. That tube will eventually get connected to the green tube that can be seen going into the filter intake:


I'm hoping the CO2 starts working soon. In the meantime, I'm going to start rearranging the plants in the tank


EDIT: This is the Sword Plant that I don't remember the name of. Feel free to let me know what it is if you know lol

funkman262

I just finished planting everything . It got cloudy again because I had to disturb the sand :


And I'm still waiting for CO2

Nutter

Looking good.

For a Sword that looks awfully like an Anubius. Just the way that it is propogating off a rhizome makes it look more Anubius than Sword. What exact species one way or the other I couldn't be positive.

Shine a torch across the surface of the co2 generator & see if there are bubbles coming to the surface. You will need to shine the light just under the surface going across the bottles or towards you. There should be little bubbles coming to the surface just like in a glass of coke. If there are no bubbles the reaction hasn't started yet. If there are bubbles you have a leak somewhere or the pressure hasn't built up enough yet to force gas through the bubble counter.

If there is a leak I suspect it will be one of the lines with the check valves on it. The airline between the check valve & the bottle tops should really be a little longer. It looks like the check valves are pushing into the lids themselves & that may be comprimising the quality of the seal. It only takes the tinest pin hole for the whole system to lose pressure. Make sure the lids on the generator bottles are not leaking around the threads. You may need to submerge them in a bucket of water to check that out.
Also give the check valves a bit of a flick. Sometimes they hold the gas back in the generator & need a flick to get them working properly.

funkman262

Thanks Nutter, I'll stick them in a bucket of water one at a time to check for leaks. As for the unknown plant, I honestly thought it was an anubias but when I asked the guy what type of plant it was he said it was some type of sword. I guess I'll make a thread in the live plant section to see if someone can help me there.

EDIT: Just to be safe, I cut longer pieces of tubing to lengthen the space between the cap and the check valve.

okaydar

I have nothing but real plants in my 14 gal Bio Cube. I have 7 different plants, sorry I don't know the names. THings were looking green and water was clear, my 4 corys were happy campers. Problem started when I saw this nurishmnet food for aqua plants. Hubby warned me not to use it, but I didn't listen thinking the plants needed nourishment. Well, withing one day..the nightmare started. By day 3 the water was so green I couldn't see the bottom, or back of my tank. I've had to do several 2-3 gallon water changes and 5 days later, well, things are looking up..........all clearing. Added water conditioner and stress coat with every water change. Changed the filter twice and not letting tank run without it after putting the water clearing algae eating drops in. Geez, what a mess I created. I'll never do that again.

funkman262

I'm sorry to hear about your problem. Thank you for the heads-up. If I understand this corrently, I'm not supposed to add any type of nutrients into the tank for a couple of months because I have the flourite black sand in there. After a couple months the nutrients in the sand should be gone so I need to add nutrients to the water column for the sand to absorb. Otherwise, excess nutrients can cause a major algae problem. I'm glad you managed to get control of it

funkman262

It's been a couple days and I'm currently getting about one bubble every 1.5 seconds from each of my CO2 generators . I love the collector bottle idea I found in one of Nutter's posts a while back because it allows me to conduct a bubble count separately for each generator . And my method of diffusion (CO2 outlet to HOB filter intake) must be working because my pH has dropped from 7.5 to 7.0 (or 6.8...it's hard for me to tell the two apart). Either way, I'm in the range I want to be (12ppm CO2 for pH 7.0, 19ppm pH 6.8).

Question: Are the liquid pH tests accurate considering that any aggitation will diffuse some of the CO2 out of the water and increase the pH (same reason you don't aerate the water when supplementing CO2)? I feel like while I'm preparing my vials for the API liquid master test kit, the CO2 could be escaping. Thanks.

Nutter

The API ones are usually pretty close. I use a syringe to put water in the vial & I only invert the vial a couple of times to mix the drops in so there isn't much agitation. I also run the tests as soon as fill the PH vials rather than let them sit while I run other tests.

Elodea

Aww, why don't you like snails? MTS and ponds snails just have bad rep. In my opinion, they're really beneficial and nice to have in the tank.

Tank's looking really good, though!

funkman262

It's not that I don't like snails, it's that I don't like not knowing what snails I'm getting. I've been thinking about possibly getting MTS but only if I know for sure that MTS is all that's being introduced into the tank Thanks for the encouragement on adding snails and for the compliment on the tank

Nate McFin

Tank looks great!
If you are running the DIY co2 into the bottom of that emperor you are offgassing alot of it. You would have much better dispersion through a different method. When the co2 goes through the impeller it chops it up into smaller bubbles (good) when those smaller bubbles go through the filter and come back through the biowheel ALOT of the gas goes airborne and is wasted. This is why biowheels are not the best method if using DIY or injected Co2. I would recommend a bubble ladder, small powerhead with tube run into it for dispersion.
Keep the tank as full as possible to minimize the impact of the water from the biowheel "waterfall". By doing this less of the Co2 escapes the water. A canister filter is best IME for Co2 enriched tanks but by taking these steps to help maintain Co2 concentration you can have success. I have a penguin biowheel in my 20G and have seen much better growth since I followed the advice of others regarding them!
For other websites, check out (Must join to use the buy sell and trade but these are great resources for plants!)
www.plantedtank.net
www.aquaticplantcentral.com
www.aquascapingworld.com
www.barrreport.com

funkman262

Thank you for that info and the links Nate I was warned about using this method of DIY CO2 dispersion but I was surprised to find that I'm actually getting the amounts of CO2 dissolved that I need. I started with 2 3L bottles and my pH dropped from around 7.4 to around 6.6 after several days of running. That amount of CO2 would be deadly for my fish so I actually disconnected one of the generators so that I could keep the pH around a steady 6.8 for when I introduce the fish back into the tank. Lately, with just the one generator (which has been running for almost 2 weeks now), I've been getting pH readings from 6.8-7.0 which is exactly where I want to be considering that my kH is 4 degrees. I've still got a bit of tweeking to do but I'll be using both generators with less yeast switching one out at a time each week (total run time of 2 weeks for each generator) to keep a more steady CO2 flow as suggested by Nutter. Thanks again Nate. I'm definately still a newbie with this whole planted tank thing so any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated

ilikefish

nice tank!... When those plants take off your going to have a gorgeous tank! not that its not nice now lol

funkman262

Thanks ilikefish