reef dude

Hi,
I am planning on setting up a 42 gallon planted tank.
What would be my best bet on lighting I was looking at a 70w matal halide with a 14k bulb but I found this to be the wrong kelvin for plants.
please help me cheers

Beth1965

I don't think there is a "correct" bulb for plants. If I am not mistaken the kelvin to a bulb refers to what the light that comes from it looks like.
You would have to say what kind of plants you plan on having-low, medium or high requirement plants before you choose the bulbs.

Nate McFin

+1!
It is thought in some circles that plants do best at 6500K but I agree with Beth it doesnt make a bit of difference.
The K indicates the color or tint the bulb will have when you view it. Lower #s such as 3500K will have a yellowish tint. 6500K a pinkiish tint. 10,000K a bluish tint. TO my eyes the 10,000K looks best in my tank. The greens look more correct and the colors of my Cardinal Tetras really pop. Under a 6500K (to my eyes) some of that is muted. It really depends on what you like.
In terms of how much light you want (wattage) it depends as Beth said on the type of plants you want to grow. low light- high light. As light wattage is increased Nutrients and Co2 must be increased to meet the growth demands of plants. Nutrients, Co2, and light must be balanced carefully to avoid Algae. The more light you have the more difficult the balance can be to find.

reef dude

Hey thanks for your quick replys,I think I will go for mostly medium light level plants and maybe one or two higher light plants.
I am going to be using a glass diffuser with DIY co2 production and what is a good Nutrient for the plants?
would I start with a good layer of plant fertilizer or could I just use liquid fertilization?
what do you use in your tanks? (lights,Co2 and nutrient supply)
sorry about all the questions...

Beth1965

I don't know what a glass deffusser is. To me (and I know nothing about this) but it seems like a lot to go through from one or two high light plants (co2).
I've been using seachems flourish but just started a tank with soild as it's sub-base.
I don't use co2.
Do not be sorry for all the ?'s that's waht the site is for!!

mathas

I don't feel there is any single, stand-alone product that works well for fertilization, if you're trying to optimize plant growth. Plants need a variety of nutrients (this is a great article to understand the basics), and I've never found an individual product that offers everything. There are comprehensive fertilizers, like SeaChem Flourish, that do an adequate job, but once you start adding CO2 and increased lighting levels, it starts to fall short in my opinion.

That depends in part on the specific plants. Plants that feed primarily through their roots, like swords, crypts, or anything in the lotus family, do best when nutrients are available at their roots... that can be from a dedicated fertilizer-enhanced substrate, or by just placing root tabs into whatever substrate you already have. Other plants absorb their nutrients through the leaves, and would do better with a water-column fertilizer, whether liquid or dry powder.

Diffusers (whether made of glass or not) help the CO2 dissolve into the water, rather than bubble up to the top and lose efficacy. Think of them like an airstone, they take the line full of CO2 and break the gas down into smaller bubbles. A picture of one type of glass diffuser can be seen here.

webtrawler84

I too have just setup my first planted tank.
for my substrate I have used JBL Proflora AquaBasis covered in a good layer of Black Gravel. I too have a DIY CO2 System and someone on here recommended that I used my filter as the diffuser, My CO2 Drop checker is saying that this method is working great. Plum the CO2 Tube to the inlet of your filter and if possible make sure that It goes before the sponge(s) so that you get as much diffusion as possible.

My biggest Problem has been Lighting. to start of with I installed another 15W T8 to compliment the original 15W T8 that came with the tank hood. This seemed to be doing ok for some of the plants but others did not seem to be getting enough light.
Yesterday I ended up taking out both light units (not the easiest of tasks) and replacing them with a Duel 36W T5 Setup. This has already made a massive difference 99% of my plants are now pearling very well. my setup is in another thread but just for reference my tank is a 63 Litre tank. you can work out how many WPG you have by deviding the number of Gallons in your tank by the number of Watt's your Lighting is putting out. I can only tell you my experiances so far and others may correct me on things which is great, It cost me a small fortune as I ended up laying out twice for lighting units instead of going for the larger on in the first place.

hope some of this helps, good luck and make sure you get some photo's up.

mark

Nutter

As the others have indicated, Kelvin ratings are for the most part, unimportant to plant growth. Just pick a bulb with a kelvin rating that gives you a visually pleasing effect. The spectral output graph is the part you want to pay attention to. Look for large spikes in the red & blue areas of the spectrum with only low levels of green light. Green light is reflected by green plants & is very inefficient for photosynthisis in green plants. If your display were to feature lots of red plants you would look for a globe that has higher peaks in the green & blue area of the spectrum & less in the red, as the red is what is being reflected.

As Mathas has stated, wether you get benefit from a nutrient substrate is really down to the plants you want to grow. If there are lots of substrate rooted plants then nutrient substrates can be of great benefit. However if you will heavily feature floating plants or plants anchored to wood or rocks in the aquarium, then you won't get much benefit from the nutrients substrates at all. Note that it is advisable to use substrate fertilizer tablets even with a nutrient substrate as it will keep the substrate topped up with minerals & extend it's working life considerably.

I use Flourish Comprehensive fertilizer myself in conjunction with Flourish Trace Elements, Flourish Potassium & powdered iron chelate along with API substrate fertilizer tablets. I only just got my first co2 injection unit so I'm not fully convinced of the results from it yet. For my diy co2 I have always just used my filter as a diffuser by hooking the co2 line directly into the filter pick-up. I have too many tanks to go into full details on lighting but I have everything from T8 flouros right through to 600w MH lights. I usually look for about 2-3wpg depending on exactly what I want to grow in each individual tank. These are only rough details of what I use though & every tank is different & has different requirements so you will have to experiment to find out what works for you & your aquarium.

Nate McFin

I want to apologize for the "sort of" Hijack.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Unless you are using a mineralized substrate with a cap or Amazonia Aquasoil, the only nutrients you will get from any substrate will be iron. I know substrates like Eco are given a nutrient bath before shipping but those nutrients are quickly used up. The benefit to using substrates like Eco or Flourite is that it has a high CEC(cation exchange capacity) rating and hence has the ability to absorb more nutrients from the water column itself making it more easily taken by roots of plants like crypts and swords. If this is true then dosing the water column (especially if dosing Co2) is needed.

reef dude

Hey thanks for all your very helpful replys.
I think I am going to just go with liquid fertilizer doseing and see where that gets me,and if I dosnt work out I will add Co2 into the filter like Mark suggested,I have done this before and it worked realy well.
I have some Aqua basis plus left over from previous tanks should I add this and/or go and buy enough to fill the rest of the bottom?
thanks for all the information it is a really big help.

The Hijack is my fult for changing the subject from lights to questions about nutrients!

Nutter

Nate - It is true that the main benefit of Flourite, Eco-Comlete & most other nutrient substrates is the high CEC. They are given a mineral bath as you say but the effects of those wear off fairly quickly. Though Seachem does claim that Flourite is not treated with any chemical bath which would imply the minerals are part of the structure of Flourite itself. I have my doubts about that though as the mineral content would be far too variable for mass marketing. My preference is for topping up the nutrients in the substrate via tabs as it restricts the amount of nutrients in the water column that are available for algae to utilise. Unless a plant is a floating plant or non- substrate rooted plant, it will take up the vast majority of it's nutrients from the root system & absorbtion of minerals through the leaves & stems will be extremely limited. Meaning feeding the roots directly will benefit the plant more than fertilizing the water column. CO2 is absorbed fairly equally by all parts of all plants so it doesn't make any difference exactly where the co2 is targeted. We can only increase the co2 levels of the water not the substrate, so we don't have any choice about that anyway. Liquid ferts work ok for topping up the substrate mineral content but can take awhile to have the desired effect, especially seeing how many of the minerals in liquid ferts drop out very quickly & are no longer available for the plants or to top up the substrate. You don't get that problem with nutrient tabs as all of the minerals are being transfered directly into the substrate before they have the chance to drop out or change form. Personally I think using substrate tabs in conjunction with smaller amounts of liquid ferts is the best way to go. Like all things planted tank related though, experimentation of what works best in each individual set up is the way to go.

Reef Dude - I have never used that particular substrate myself but so long as it hasn't broken down into a powdered form that will just turn to sludge as soon as it gets wet it should be fine to reuse. Top it up with minerals via one of the methods that has been previously suggested.

Beth1965

marc, u can update your profile so that your setup is always available at each post you make.

Beth1965

mathas; thank you for the pic of the diffuser.