# Planning a 125 gallon Natural tank...



## micm66 (Oct 18, 2012)

Hello,

I am in the process of building a stand and hood and gathering the hardware to resurrect our old 125 gallon tank as a naturally planted tank. I wouldn't have started with such a big tank, but we had it and most of the more costly hardware like filters, heaters, and so forth just sitting around gathering dust along with the tank.

My question is this - how does one go about planning what and how many plants to purchase to get the tank started, given that you need enough biomass to get things ticking over right away? I would like to do this in the most cost-effective manner possible, so I want to start with less expensive plants. As it gets established and I learn more, then I would be willing to risk the "fancier" plants at that time.

I've visited several aquarium plant supply websites, and it's pretty tough to tell "how much" of a given plant you might get with a particular "purchase unit." Is there a strategy or rule-of-thumb I can use to make sure I buy enough plants without wasting money?

Thanks in advance,

~Mike


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Mike, that is not an easy question to answer. I believe some of the retail plant sites offer "collections" for various size tanks, that might be a starting point.

In a Walstad or "El natural" tank, we like to see about 75% of the substrate (viewed from the top) covered with plants right from the start. You can multiply length x width x .75 to get the number of square inches that you want to cover.

The most economical plants are usually the fast growing stems, and these are great for establishing a new tank. In the Plant Finder it gives you an average width for each stem of a given species--1" wide, 2" wide, etc. Each stem that is 1" wide will cover one square inch (1 x 1 = 1). Each stem that is 2" wide will cover 4 square inches (2 x 2 = 4). This way you can get a rough idea of how many individual stems you need to plant.

For rosette plants, the Plant Finder usually just gives a height measurement. If you look at the photos, you can see if the species is tall and slender, or spreading. You can then make a guess at how many square inches it will cover.

I hope someone else can suggest a less tedious method! If there are any other planted tank enthusiasts in your area, the simplest way might be to just buy a large quantity of the least expensive stems they have--if they are like me, they will probably be willing to give them to you, LOL.


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## Luffy (Aug 23, 2012)

They sell really cheap packets of bulbs at most pet stores. They're like three bucks for a packet of seven or eight bulbs and they have worked pretty well for me. The plants in there grow big and relatively quickly and they're cheap. (Throw out the onion bulbs cause I hear they're not actual water plants)
Also, I'd recommend getting some kind of fast growing ground cover with good roots. They seem to do a much better job of keeping the substrate aerobic than stems. Get the stems too cause they suck up excess nutrients like crazy. Pennywort has been my favorite stem plant cause they're cheap, really quick and unfussy growers, suck up nutrients, and can be grown floating, in the substrate, or they can even grow out of the aquarium. If you get a bunch, you can cut it up into various pieces to plant, and in a month or so you'll have a lot of pretty lush round leaves running around your tank.


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## totziens (Jun 28, 2008)

It's indeed a tough question. Most of us cannot estimate on the amount of plants needed accurately. I believe even the professionals cannot estimate correctly. In planted tank set up demonstration, usually they purchase more than what the tank requires especially when the purchaser does not know the taste/plan of the person doing the demo.

For regular hobbyists like us, mostly we will under estimate but keep adding along the way. The plants can grow and multiply anyway. For el natural, you just have to purchase as much as possible as long as you can afford them. Sometimes it's good to purchase from other hobbyists to save cost and you have more varieties. You'll need fast growers in el natural to absorb extra nutrients.


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## micm66 (Oct 18, 2012)

Thank you all for the info!

As I was looking through the plant-seller's sites, I was thinking about it by the square inch myself. They had info like "A bundle usually has x to y stems in it." So I figured how many square inches that would make if I laid them out in a grid of 1"x1". Glad to know I wasn't being my usual overly-analytical self.

~Mike


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

I’m not sure this fits your criteria but you might consider growing the plants out to fill the space. I find that less water is much easier to deal with. Instead of starting out with 125 gallons you can start out with about 6 inches of water. Essentially you just deal with the whole tank as if it is a grow out tank until you have enough plants to fill it all in. You don’t need large amounts of plants to do this and you can afford to buy the plants you want in smaller quantities. Rescaping as you go along is fairly easy. Essentially you can empty the tank any time you want to move things around and then simply refill it. Periodically buying packages of plants offered here on this site for instance you can acquire a pretty amazing variety of plants fairly inexpensively . 
It is a little slower but in the end it does seem worth it.


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## mudboots (Jun 24, 2009)

+1 to BruceF's comments. As the plants grow you'll eventually want to move a set here/there...and taking your time with the scaping and rearranging will result in a happier set up in the long run. With only a little water in the tank while you're doing this there will be less issues with turning your water into pea soup (green water algae) et cetera.

One of my favorite "easy" plants in a 125 is the red lotus, but I would recommend potting it, as it can eventually make tank maintenence difficult for you, similar to Crypt. spirialis or some of the other aggressive root-spreaders.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Along the same lines as Bruce's suggestion, you could set up some little tanks or even big jars or buckets and propagate plants in those until you have enough to set up the 125. It is surprising how many plants you can grow in a 20 gallon Rubber Maid tote if you let them fill it up.


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## Skizhx (Oct 12, 2010)

I'd say roughly 1 plant every square inch. Give it a couple weeks to root and establish, and start the biomass with malaysian trumpet snails and maybe some shrimp after a little bit, working your way up slowly to fish.

How I do it at least.


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## micm66 (Oct 18, 2012)

Many thanks to Roy and the rest of the folks at the Greater Seattle Aquarium Society!

I attended their annual plant auction Wednesday night, and I was able to pick up enough plants to get the tank started, at a fraction of what it would have cost to order them all.

They are a great group of people and my wife and I had a lot of fun.

Mike in Puyallup, WA


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