Advice for my first tank - low tech 2ft

[simoncxy]

Hi all.

I'm planning to have a planted shrimp tank (starting with red cherry shrimps). I've bought the tank, a 24" x 12" x 14" glass tank, and I do have a bag of black gravel (approximately 2-3mm sizes) that I retained from a tank I used to keep a long time ago. I will be building my own led lighting, a 24W-30W lighting with dual channel ramp controller. I am looking for the aquarium to have a look that mimics a couple of cliffs and valleys, with quite a fair bit of rocks. I've already bought seachem prime and seachem flourish. I intend to get seachem flourish excel for the CO2 needs since I won't be getting a tank in the near future. I only intend to get shrimps into the tank after a month or two of cycling.

Questions:

1. What plants should i get for the "floor"of the aquarium? I've heard that japanese hairgrass isn't too CO2 and light demanding.
2. Should I get ADA Amazonia or is there another substrate that I should get? Amazonia creates quite a fair bit of ammonia in the water and if I'm not heavily planted and providing a lot of CO2 and light, the ammonia would pull the PH up.
3. Other than Red Cherry Shrimps, any other shimps would you guys recommend me to keep?

Thanks for your help, guys! Appreciate it!

[Urban Aquaria]

While japanese hairgrass (and most hairgrass in general) can still grow in low-tech low light tank environments, their growth rate will be much slower without Co2 injection and ample lights, so you will need to wait a long time for them to grow out into a full carpet.

Maybe consider planting Micranthemum Monte Carlo instead, they tend to grow more readily in low-tech tanks. Still not as fast as in high-tech tanks, but at least abit faster then most other carpet plants.

ADA Amazonia aquasoil is a great soil substrate if you want to grow healthy plants, it contains alot of the necessary nutrients that the plants need so they don't encounter deficiencies during the initial grow out period. Since you will not be adding any livestock in the tank during the cycling period, it's okay for ammonia to be high as that provides ample nutrients for the plant and also for the beneficial bacteria to feed on and multiply. Once the plants grow out and the tank is fully cycled, the ammonia levels will eventually be zero anyways.

Do note that if you run an empty tank with inert substrate and no ammonia sources, the beneficial bacteria will not grow and multiply as there is no ammonia to sustain them anyways, so it actually never gets cycled. Hence ammonia from active soil substrates actually help to kickstart and maintain the cycling process.

Btw, high ammonia levels will tend to acidify the water so it pulls pH down, not up. Lower pH is more conducive for most plant growth anyways so that's the intended effect of active soil substrates.

As for shrimps, cherry shrimps are good to start with as they can tolerate a relatively wide range of parameters and temperature. You can also consider other hardy species like malayan shrimps, red nose shrimps and yamato shrimps too, all of those will not crossbreed with each other so can be mixed together in a community shrimp tank.

[simoncxy]

Hi Urban Aquaria. Thanks so much for your tips. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me.

At the lfs that I bought my tank from, NEO KIM SUEY AQUARIUM, the owner recommended me an aquatic plant that was tied to small rectangular pieces of wood and was selling it at $2 per pack of perhaps 8-10 stalks tied to one piece of wood. He mentioned a name that I vaguely remembered sounding something like autumn, but I couldn't find any plant that sounds remotely like that. :/ He also mentioned that it's suitable as a carpet plant for low-tech tanks. Hmmm.. I should go try to take a look at it again and ask him again for the name. At $2 per packet, it's well within my budget to get enough for a well planted foreground.

By the way, do you have any recommendations for something taller for the midground? Something that's probably 10-15cm tall and thin. And would fissidens work well being planted on the rocks in my tank or is there a better mossy alternative?

[Urban Aquaria]

Maybe you can check the plant lists on these websites to see if you can ID the plant:

http://tropica.com/en/plants/

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/f...finder/all.php

As for midground plants, you could look at blyxa japonica or the mid-sized cryptocorynes (ie. becketti, willisi or wendtii).

For moss on rocks, fissidens are good, they are slow growers but stay neat and compact, go for the mini fissiden version if you want something which remains short. The other alternative is christmas moss which grows faster, though you'll need to trim it more often to maintain a neat crop. Just make sure the rocks have a rough or porous surface so that the moss can attach on easily over time.

[simoncxy]

Thanks so much! Didn't know such a useful list of plant exists. The plant i saw seems to be a Lindernia rotundifolia. It states that it has a medium CO2 requirement, does that mean that excel on it's own won't be suitable?

[Urban Aquaria]

Thanks so much! Didn't know such a useful list of plant exists. The plant i saw seems to be a Lindernia rotundifolia. It states that it has a medium CO2 requirement, does that mean that excel on it's own won't be suitable?

Well, the Co2 recommendations detailed on plant lists are more for encouraging optimal growth, those plants can still grow without Co2 injection, just that growth rate will be slower.

Excel can help to partially substitute for Co2, so there will be some growth benefits with its daily usage.

If the plant is Lindernia rotundifolia, its a stem plant which will grow tall (even up to and above the water surface then sprout flowers), so its more suitable as a background plant.

That being said, such stem plants could still be used at the front of the tank too, you will just have to keep trimming it more often to maintain a low height.

[simoncxy]

Just went to seaview today to take a look at their plants. The monte carlo looks pretty affordable. For excel tanks without CO2, do I plant the stalks close to each other or spaced apart? I reckon that without CO2, they will grow slowly so I would need to plant them closer to get the carpet look earlier. Will quite likely just have monte carlo for carpet, fissiden on the rocks and either Ceratophyllum demersum or Lindernia Rotundifolia as a sparsely planted background plant. Going for a look that focuses much more on the rocks as the object of attention rather than the plants, with the rocks forming a large valley.

[Urban Aquaria]

Just went to seaview today to take a look at their plants. The monte carlo looks pretty affordable. For excel tanks without CO2, do I plant the stalks close to each other or spaced apart? I reckon that without CO2, they will grow slowly so I would need to plant them closer to get the carpet look earlier. Will quite likely just have monte carlo for carpet, fissiden on the rocks and either Ceratophyllum demersum or Lindernia Rotundifolia as a sparsely planted background plant. Going for a look that focuses much more on the rocks as the object of attention rather than the plants, with the rocks forming a large valley.

For carpet plants, if you are hardworking its usually best to separate them into individual plantlets and plant them with with even spacing (ie. 1cm) between each other... though most people get lazy after a while and just plant them in bunches.

You can plant them closer to each other, just that more will be needed to fill up any given space, so have to buy more packets of the plants. As with any plants, the more you add in the beginning the faster it grows out.

Make sure you wash and treat the plants from LFS before using them in your tank, try to clear out any hitchhiking critters and algae that are present amongst the plants.

[simoncxy]

Hmmm.. What do you mean by "the faster it grows out"? and how do I treat the plants from LFS? Do I quarantine them for a couple of days in tap water or just wash it under running tap water?

[amaninus]

Hi Simon,
You have to trust UA Shifu on the quarantine thing. He has written how to quarantine in the plant talk subforum.
http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...d.php?t=122694

Everyone likes free gifts. But trust me, not snails. I was ignorant and my tank had snails and dragonfly nymph. They were my nightmare. Assassin snails don't eat very small snails and the snails multiply like crazy. Its worth to do the quarantine process.

Just my thoughts.

Sent from my ASUS_Z00AD using Tapatalk

[Urban Aquaria]

Hmmm.. What do you mean by "the faster it grows out"? and how do I treat the plants from LFS? Do I quarantine them for a couple of days in tap water or just wash it under running tap water?

Yeah, its all a matter of time va budget, if you can buy more plants then you can get a higher density of plants established from the start, hence the faster the carpet is created... on the other hand, if you only buy a few plants, then just have to wait much longer for those sparse sprouts to multiply and grow out into a carpet.

You can have a look at example treatments and quarantine methods in the link that amaninus posted to get some idea of the process.

[simoncxy]

Good point. I'll be hardworking and follow the quarantine and chemical dosing method as shown by shifu. Good to put in effort at the start so that I won't worry later on. Thanks so much for the link!