I kill duckweed, but really want a planted tank!

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Peanut_Power

Running From The Hammer...
MFK Member
Jul 6, 2005
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I am really wanting to have a planted tank, but alas I am having difficulties. I don't know if its my high pH and hardness, or what, but I can't keep plants alive. I've decided though to start using rain water, and have managed to drop my pH and hardness some.

To get my 125gal planted is my goal. I'm wanting to have a SA Biotope themed tank, so Java Fern is out. I'm gonna stretch it a little and use java moss though since I just got some 'established' in there.

What suggestions do you guys have? How would I go about doing this? We have some nice plants at the LFS that I work at, but don't want to kill them if I can help it. We have this really nice apanogeton (sp) that seems really easy to take care of. Low light, nothing special, and its taking over our tanks. LoL

For lighting I just have a 4' shop light that is a two bulb T8. Thought about adding either another 4' shop light or possibly a T5 two bulb shop. I'm not wanting to do CO2, so super heavy lighting or hard plants are out. I want to be able to enjoy this tank without having to stress and constantly be working on it.
 
Peanut_Power;4126575; said:
I am really wanting to have a planted tank, but alas I am having difficulties. I don't know if its my high pH and hardness, or what, but I can't keep plants alive. I've decided though to start using rain water, and have managed to drop my pH and hardness some.

To get my 125gal planted is my goal. I'm wanting to have a SA Biotope themed tank, so Java Fern is out. I'm gonna stretch it a little and use java moss though since I just got some 'established' in there.

What suggestions do you guys have? How would I go about doing this? We have some nice plants at the LFS that I work at, but don't want to kill them if I can help it. We have this really nice apanogeton (sp) that seems really easy to take care of. Low light, nothing special, and its taking over our tanks. LoL

For lighting I just have a 4' shop light that is a two bulb T8. Thought about adding either another 4' shop light or possibly a T5 two bulb shop. I'm not wanting to do CO2, so super heavy lighting or hard plants are out. I want to be able to enjoy this tank without having to stress and constantly be working on it.
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First off, how the hell do you kill duckweed? Hahaha... if you actually do, then this will be hard. If you're doing an SA/Amazon theme then finding low light plants won't be a problem. Check out this website for a few plant ideas. there are tons more out there too. Lastly what substrate are you using and what is the wattage/spectrum of your lighting?
 
Yes, I did manage to kill duckweed. I think the problem was I had heavy filtration so it was constantly getting pushed around and below the surface, and my tank was set to 84 to 86 degrees. Since then I've dropped it down to about 78 to 80 degrees range. :)

I'm just using pool filter sand. :) I don't really want to put all that money into all those substrates, and then not be able to grow the plants anyway. Plus the fish I have do better on a sandy substrate. :( Thus the wanting of a low maintenance, low light plant.

Wattage is about. . . not enough. I've got two 4' 32watt T8 bulbs on the 125gal. So thats about 64 watts total, making it .50 watts per gallon. I imagine I could move my other two bulber over, but thats just making it one watt per gallon. The spectrum is in the 65K range I believe, don't member. I bought them as grow bulbs from Walmart. Hahaha

How the mess do I cost effectively raise the wattage on my tank and still have room?! LoL! Those two bulb fixtures take up a good amount of space. I suppose I could bump it up to T5s, but how many of them would I need?
 
Is the tank 6 feet long?

4 T8 bulbs should be fine for the area underneath them.

If you upgrade to T5HO, 2 bulbs would be plenty. That's probably going to cost $100+ though. Normal output T5s are about as powerful as T8 or T12, just less energy.
 
Yeah its a 6' tank. :) I work at a LFS so I suppose I could get a discount on the T5HO light fixtures, just not sure if I want to drop that much money on something I can get for cheaper at Lowes or HomeDepot ya know? I'd rather use that money on new fish if I could get away with less lighting for the plants! LoL!
 
i really like this website. i referred to it a lot when first starting out. great info in his articles: www.rexgrigg.com
 
I had amazon swords, java fern, wisteria, java moss, some random anubias, and some giant baby tears (growing floating at the surface) all growing really well with just regular twist-tube cfl's. No co2 and only irregular dosing with liquid ferts. Mine was a SA biotope as well. It had play sand from home depot, and several large pieces of driftwood (helped drop the pH after a while).

I didn't have to do anything other than trim the plants about every other week, once they got established. But I wasn't starting out at a high pH like you are. I started at 7 and dropped it down to an average of 5.5 once it matured.
 
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]I have never tried the duckweed indoors in a tank. How many watts would you suggest for a 30gal and a 55gal?[/FONT]
 
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