Help starting a planted tank and introduction

[trodi]

Hello I am new to this hobby and wanted to introduce myself as well as to ask a few beginning questions. First off, I’m excited to be delving into planted aquariums and have read a couple of posting on this site and excited to join, thanks for your help so far. Since I began two years ago keeping fish I’ve always desired the look of live plants. However, my first attempts at plants from my LFS only lasted several weeks before dying. I eventually bought artificial plants, which currently decorate my 55g tank, bosemani’s, tetra’s, Barbs and catfish fairly well. I started reading up on keeping planted tanks and realized I needed a lot more. Lighting and essentially CO2, which I realized I would need to recreate some of the flourishing tanks I have desired to mimic. The cost however was always out of my budget.

Two months ago I stumbled upon some nice wood for a canopy. My father –in-law also had some compressed gas equipment he gave me. I built a nice canopy that can hold 160w of fluorescent lighting, and now have a CO2 cylinder, regulator, flow meter and I’m in the process of designing a diffuser for the compressed CO2. I’m quite excited to get this going but it leaves me with some big questions about getting started. I already decided that my barbs, catfish and pleco are going to removed and given to a friend and I’m going to set up some other temp tanks for my tetras and bosemani’s while I get the planted tank ready. That’s where I need some help.

How do I begin to cycle my tank with plants? Is there a way to use my already established aquarium water or should I start from the beginning? I read on “chucks planted aquarium page” http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/index.htm to start with all the equipment first and stem plants primarily for about 6 weeks, testing CO2 levels before adding fish. I’m wondering what plants I should buy. What are stem plants? A family member, hearing of my enthusiasm, gave me a gift certificate for “That Fish Place” as a gift for my birthday, I was thinking of buying a bulk assortment of their “river bed assortment” to get started which includes: 1 - Red rubin, 2 - Ruffled Sword, 10 – Subulata,2 – Hornwort, 4 - Crypt petchii, 2 - Anubias congensis, 4 - Aquarium Lily, 4 - Crypt spiralis, 2 - Java Moss, 2 – Wisteria, 2 – Crispus, 4 – Rotala. This also leave me with the question of which substrate combo. I read it was good to add a layer of laterite. I’m excited about all of this. I appreciate any help any one can offer and some tips. I plan on posting pics of stages of my tank once I get going. Almost everything is ready to go, except the plants and substrate. Thanks for your help. Sorry for the long winded descritption but I wanted to give enough information. Please let me know if you need other specs. And feel free to comment on any part of this.
Thanks,
Tim

[michael lai]

Hi Tim,
First, a warm welcome to AQ. I'm nowhere near chuck but I'll share my 2 cents. I'll break this up to point form easier to digest, I would not go into very detailed explanation, I'll leave this to others.

Prologue: Since you already know light and Co2 is important, we skip this first. The rest of the gang will fill you in on how much light and Co2 you'll need.

1)Substrate
Generally, we use substrate size of about 1-3mm in size. The common ones here are Lapis sand. We also use heavily Seachem and ADA's product. Amount required will depend your scape and plants. We also use ready mix fertilisers over here from JBJ, Dennerle and taiwan products. Crushed corals are not recommended for Planted tanks.

2)What scape and what plants.
First you got to determine what kind of scape you want? and what kind of plants that you want? High maintenance? Those scapes that look like a japanese garden or those wild look straight out of a stream in malaysia. There are not much of dutch style followers over here. Do not be overwhelm here, have a look at the aquascaping section and tell us what you like and we'll go from there. Rocks and drift wood are very much of the scape as the plants itself.

3)Research on the plants.
How big they grow, what are their requirements? Where are they from? This will determine where they sit in the aquarium, background, mid or foreground.

4)While you are at it, do some research on water parameters, water temperature, filteration systems, liquid fertilisers, lightings, algae prevention and co2 injection. All readily available at the search button. Most of these topics have been discussed before if not just start a thread and ask.

Take your time and do the research, it will definitely be worth your while. If in doubt just ask, we'll guide you step by step along the way.

Have fun

[trodi]

Hi Micheal,
Thank you for the warm welcome and suggestions to begin with a design scape vision even prior to start up....makes sense. It sounds as if you know of Chuck. Would you recommend his advice on getting a planted tank started?

[michael lai]

Hi Trodi,
Well, Chuck's words gets around and his advise is sound. It's just that I personally feel we do things differently across the globe. Not right or wrong that kind of different but the approach. The fundamentals are the same though. I would call your stage the experimental stage, they will be many small mistakes along the way but that's where all the fun is. Since you have the gift voucher, use it. You will learn alot from those plants.
But after this, you'll probably start thinking about composition, colour/texture and more difficult plants, then that's where the real fun begins.