# Beginer : First Planted Tank



## stanleychin (Apr 8, 2005)

Hi,

I just set up my tank yesterday with some plants such as Amazon sword, Bacopa, val thin, ambulia and hair grass.

39 gal tank
3 X 30 watt No Fluorescent, 10 hrs a day
Fluval 204 external canister filter
Normal gravel
Hagen Nutrafin CO2 system
ph 7
KH 5.5
GH 260

1, Do i need to have another DIY co2 in my tank?
2, I will use the Seachem Flourish, Seachem Flourish Iron, Seachem Flourish Excel for the fertilizers. Do i need the Seachem Flourish Potassium and Seachem Fourish Nitrogen for my low tech tank?
3, My GH is 260, is the water too hard for the plants?
4, Can someone give me some suggestions on maintaining my tanks such as fertilizing as i do not have others water testing kit such as iron, nitrate and so.
5, What kind of fish can get rid of brown algea?

Sorry for so many silly questions. I hope all of you could help me.

Thanks








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## ardvark (Feb 26, 2005)

Hi stanleychin,
I really don't think that you questions are silly at all. I find silly answers more fruitless so lets see if we can clarify some of your items.

I looked at the picture of your tank and it looks like a pretty good start, but I'm a fanatic and if it were me I would immediately double or even triple the number of plants you have in there if you can afford it. It's always a good idea to start off a tank with as many plants as possible, then you can always prune and elliminate the onse that you find invasive or later on.

90watts/40gallons gives you 2.3 watts per gallon which is a pretty good start which will help curtail algae. A lot of people start off with megawattage and have a heck of a time taming the tank so that was clever of you.

I'll have to confess that I don't really know what "normal" gravel is anymore these days, there are so many hot rod brand names like "onyx" and "powersand" I often wonder if batteries are included. I'll just assume you were clever here as well and grabbed a couple of bags of $1.99 "real brown" from the lower shelf in the pet shop around the corner right? Brilliant. That should work.

Worth noting is that if you had used one of the "super duper" enriched substrates and if you wanted to maintain low tech and minimal maintenance, CO2 addition would not be a priority. Enriched substrates are kind of a requirement for low tech. Is it too late to rip everything out and replace the gravel?

Now we get to my first point of confusion. You say you have a "Hagen Nutrafin CO2 system" right? So why would you need a DIY CO2 system. What is this Hagen system composed of? Is it a regulator attached to a pressurized container of CO2 on one end and some kind of CO2 diffuser/reactor on the tank end? If so you would just turn a knob somewhere and more bubbles of CO2 would be admitted into the tank right? (I'll confess total ignorance here) - or is this some sort of liquid that you pour into the tank? If it is a pressurized system you definitely do not need to even know how to spell DIY, just forget about it and turn the knob on the Hagen. If it's a liquid, well, I would just buy more liquid or consider the DIY if you wanted to lower your costs.

Lets assume for convenience that this Hagen thing is a pressurized system and that you are not using any pH buffers in the tank (which you absolutely don't need if you have the CO2 gas). At a kH of, call it 6 - I would turn the knob and increase the CO2 output until I measure a pH of about 6.8. This gives an approximate CO2 concentration of 30 ppm and will help to supress some forms of algae.

I'm sure your filter works as advertised, just plug it in, and your 10 hours a day of light seems fine. My opinion is that if your filter has any chemical pads such as carbon pads or, heaven forbid, nitrate removers ditch them immediately. My belief is that they interfere with nutrient availability.

Your gH calculates to about 15 degrees which means your milage may vary depending on which specific plants you get. Most of the plants we use come from soft water streams and river banks. Some Asian species are collected in hard water ponds but I venture that the effects of high gH will be much more dramatic on, and detrimental to your fish than the plants. kH is more relevant to plants than gH (that's because kH involves carbon compounds and plants love carbon but gH involves other less critical compounds) but I have only ever kept softwater tanks so someone else may have a more informed opinion on this item.

There is a lot of discussion about fertilizer dosing on this site. You should probably do a search using "dosing" or "dosage" or "fertilizer" or even "ferts" or "nutrient" and you'll get a boatload of opinions. I'm a proponent of Tom Barr's Estimative Index (EI) method which fits quite nicely for those who don't own or who don't want to own a battery of test kits. The method is flexible and can be adapted for use with commercial products such as the Seachem products you mentioned. I was looking up Flourish for another forum member the other day and I noticed one thing in your list of fertilizers:

Flourish already has iron so I don't see a need to get a separate iron product unless your iron uptake is unusually high, why not just add more regular Flourish if you want more iron? That way you add more of everything. Seachem might have a better explanation though.

Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium should definitely be added even in your moderate lighting setup. Start with the dosing recomendation on the bottles and if you see algae that means you need to increase your dosage.

An alternative to the commercial products such as Flourish is to use the individual dosing chemicals such as KNO3, KH2PO4 and Plantex micro mix. One source of these products is www.gregwatson.com

Flourish Excel is a product that provides an alternate source of carbon. As discussed above however, if your Hagen Nutrifin is a pressurized CO2 system, or if you decide to DIY CO2 then the Excel is redundant. Excel is used to get carbon to plants which live in a non-CO2 augmented tank.

You mention that you have brown algae? Or did you mean you were preparing just in case you got brown algae? Do a forum search using "algae eat" or "sae", or "pleco" you'll find lots of info. If you have algae this means you need to immediately increase your dosage of all fertilizers and to increase your CO2.

Hope this helps, sorry if some of the info seems conflicting but your setup seems neither optimized for low tech nor high tech but is somewhere in the middle.

Cheers,


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## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

1) Yes, you need more C02 than 1 nutrifin system can produce for a 39G tank. These systems are best used on tanks under 20 gallons. I would suggest that you remove the canister and hook up a 2 liter pop bottle or two to the ladder. This will be cheaper in the end & produce more C02.

2) Since you are adding C02 you really don't need to use the Excel. I would also add KN03 (potassium nitrate) to your tank, which you can get from are sponsor Greg Watson or pick up some Green light stump remover from Lowe's.

3) Some plants like softer water than others, but I have had no problem growing plants in a KH of 16 (286).

4) You don't need a iron test, go by the way your plants look. I would add iron once a week, you can always increase the amounts if your plants start yellowing. You do need a N03 (nitrate) & P04 (phosphates) test kits, these two nutrients are very important in maintaining a balanced tank. Start dosing your ferts slowly and dose your micros & macros on different days. 

5) Otto's will eat brown algae.

You tank is nice but you need to add more plants exspecially those that are fast growers. Plants help soak up nutrients that algae also feed on.


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## Pondlife (Mar 8, 2005)

stanleychin said:


> Hi,
> 
> I just set up my tank yesterday with some plants such as Amazon sword, Bacopa, val thin, ambulia and hair grass.
> 
> ...


 Hi Stanleychin! I can definately agree with the extra co2. I too bought the nutrafin system for my 40 gal. and very quickly added a 2L pop bottle to it using some extra silicone airline and a "T" junction. This has been my setup for the last 6 weeks but I am now thinking about scrapping the nutrafin bottle altogether and running off two 2L bottles. (Using the single 2L bottle and the nutrafin bottle together gets my co2 at about 20-25ppm maximum). I can vouch for the effectiveness of the nutrafin "ladder" though - I get a much better dissolve rate from that than by running the co2 direct into my filter.... Good luck!!


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## stanleychin (Apr 8, 2005)

HI,

Thank you for your opinions. i appraciated it so much. I have DIY another 2 ltr bottle co2.

I noticed my tank starts to grow a lot of brown algea on the leaves. Should i put 2 ottos catfish (Otocinclus sp) to the tank right now?

Do i need to start dosing fertilizer to the plants or i just follow the beginner manual website ( http://www.vectrapoint.com./main/manual/manual.html )which is start dosing fertilizer from week 4 onward?

Is glass shrimp a good algea eater?

Thanks


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## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

I would first test for ammonia/nitrite first before adding the Otto's, since your tank has few plants. I would suggest to add some fast growers in the tank to help keep the algae under control. 

No Ghost (Glass) shrimp do not make good algae eaters. They may eat some algae but are mainly scavengers. 

I have always waited 3-4 weeks to add ferts to the tank, plants from what I have read will use stored nutrients for a few weeks before using ferts put into the water. I know others here on this forum start dosing from day one. I would do what you feel comfortable with. What ever you decide start off slow.


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