Coryd55

Ok well I was looking for fish to put in one of the 30's and it hit me. A heavily planted tank. Like the works, 2+ WPG and maybe CO2. I would put a decent sized school of neons(8-10) in there for the sake of fish and I like them in heavily planted tanks. What does everyone think?

Thanks in advance.

COBettaCouple

sounds good.

≈ D ≈

How about 20 Neons or even Cardinals?

Chief_waterchanger

Cory, that sounds awesome. Heavily planted tanks are a fun thing that are sorely overlooked by most.

Neville

Actually i don't like planted tanks, i would suggest Discus fish, they r fascinating.

capekate

Hi Cory
I also love heavily planted tanks. Your idea sounds wonderful. I would also go with those 20 numbers as well. Especially the cardinal tetras.
Some day when I can afford better lighting for my 55g tank I will be sure to put in a lot of live plants there. Just with the little bit of frill plant that I have floating in it now I see how much the fish love to swim around it, rather than the silk or plastic plants.

Good luck with that!
~ kate

MudHog

I'm all for it. Afterall, it was one of my suggestions in your previous thread about what to do with the new 30G tanks you aquired.

What's the dimensions of it? Is it a standard 29G tank that's 30" long? If so, you will run into some headaches finding a light fixture. The 30" is sort of an odd ball as there's no fixture that will give you 100% light coverage, unless you go with a double lamp fixture. The singles are usually only 21" long and I've seen some (Coralife) that has the lamp offset to one side.

If your wanting to make your own fixture, Coralife has a 13" bulb. You can use a dual ballast and operate two inline for 26" of light over 30".

Coryd55

I think I'll be Pming you, Mudhog. You seem like you know what your talking about hehe.

Dino

Sounds cool.

Coryd55

So I guess the plan is 20 cardinals and heavily planted. Thats all I got so far. I will try to come up with some plants and junk soon.

Coryd55

Ok so I have a basic idea. I want one of these XXl/Mother plants. They had one Anubias and XL val's at Petland and they looked amazing.

Good price? Also does anyone have any experience with the site?
http://www.aquariumplants.com/product_p/xxl675.htm

I don't know if an XXL plant would be to large for the 30G? I just can't come up with a nice aquascape. Suggestions?

MudHog

I'll be honest. I don't have a live plant tank, but over the last two months I have been doing alot of research. I've called mfr. asking questions on ballasts and all kinds of stuff.

I did find out this on ballasts. The high end brands like Ice Cap, you can have a 55 watt ballast and operate any bulb wattage up to that rating. This means you can get a 55 watt ballast and operate a 24w bulb. This is helpful in the future if you ever wanted to upgrade the wattage on your tank. You can change just the bulb. The reason is, the ballasts adjust itself depending on the load. Load being the bulb. Some ballasts are preset and will put out x amount of wattage, no matter the load. This could mean a 24watt bulb in a 55watt ballast would get 55watts of power. This would eventually burn out the bulb quicker as it's getting over powered.

I've also found out that you have more bulb options by going with a straight pin setup. The best bulb is made by GE and it's a 9235*K bulb and is straight pin. You can use anything from 4000-10000k though.

jsalemi

That's the bulb that came with my All-Glass 55w cf hood -- I really like it.

MudHog

yep, I seen those.

Joe, how do you like the reflector in the All-Glass fixture? i've looked at that one, but heard the reflector isn't the greatest. I found the AG is a little more expensive than say a 30" Satellite with lunar lights. About 20-30 bucks more.

jsalemi

The reflector covers the whole inside of the fixture, so I have no problem with it. I got it on sale at DFS, so the price difference wasn't that much.