is this enough lighting?

[EntoCraig]

huh, ill have to take another look at lighting. i did research on all that stuff years ago and settled into a setup that i thought was appropriate but iv forgotten most all of it by now.

No worries You can also do wonders with medium and lower light plants. It's a misconception that you need high lights to get the results you want. If you look at my blog (signature) there is a planted tank at the top (header)
of the page. That tank was grown in tap water with medium lights and no Co2, and once a week fertilizing. And it was grown in Crushed coral.

 

[Prometheus]

ferts, thats another thing i should read upon. what kinds have you had success with in the past?

 

[EntoCraig]

ferts, thats another thing i should read upon. what kinds have you had success with in the past?

So far I exclusively use Flourish, and Leaf Zone, and water column ferts, I use Flourish Root tabs in my sand substrate tanks, and I use Floursih Excel and Co2 in some tanks for a carbon source.

Many people are doing Fancy EI dosing and stuff like this, and while the results are amazing, they are not a necessity to achieve good healthy growth in your plants.

I guess to some up this and my previous posts: You can go as simple or as complicated as you want with a planted tank. The key is to find the plants you like that work with the water you have.

I only buy and propigate plants that will grow in our hard, Utah tap water.

 

[jcardona1]

Many people are doing Fancy EI dosing and stuff like this, and while the results are amazing, they are not a necessity to achieve good healthy growth in your plants.

There's nothing really fancy about it

Fancy is the Seachem stuff, and other lines of ferts. They take the same stuff we use in EI, dilute it with water, slap it in nice bottle with a pretty label, and jack up the price 600%.

EI uses the same ferts, but in powder form. A $20-30 'kit' will last you well over a year, maybe even two years. You simply dose using the recommended guidelines. Scoop out the appropriate amount, and dump it in the tank, just as you would with the bottled liquid stuff.

The end result is the same, only difference is the price you pay. EI is viewed as scary and super technical. Couldn't be farther from the truth. The idea is simple; dose all the necessary ferts in excess throughout the week, then 'reset' the levels by doing a 50% water change at the end of the week. Easy as pie

 

[EntoCraig]

Don't get me wrong its a great method. By fancy I meant 'Daily'... Any daily tinkering is just too tedious for me

Im a once-a-week ferter. lol

 

[jcardona1]

I promise, leaving one bulb out will not harm it in any way. If you can run just the one bulb, you will have much better success with your planted tank.

You can use any bulb as long as you understand the wavelengths its throwing out. My personal favorits are FULL SPECTRUM, Sunlight bulbs. You can also add accent bulbs with lower output that spike in green or red for enhanced colors. Flora Glow Lights are also good, but are a little dim IMO.

Depends on how the fixture is wired. Some fixtures won't work if 1 bulb is removed. Take for example, the Hagen Glo T5 fixture. Remove one of the bulbs, and the other won't turn on.

 

[EntoCraig]

Yeah i stated that in a previous post. He needs to test it to see if he can still run it. some work, some wont :/

 

[jcardona1]

Don't get me wrong its a great method. By fancy I meant 'Daily'... Any daily tinkering is just too tedious for me

Im a once-a-week ferter. lol

That's another thing, it doesn't have to be everyday. The EI rules aren't written in stone, and they aren't to be taken as such. In all my tanks I've had to tweak amounts here and there. Nothing says it has to be done daily. Daily dosing is based on the idea that you have a high tech tank with lots of lighting, where thinks will go ape-poo if you so much as even blink for too long.

If you have a tank with less lighting, then it requires less ferts. It's all about experimenting. If you're dosing weekly with the liquid stuff, why can't you dose weekly with the powdered stuff? Same exact ferts, right? Like I said, only difference is the price you pay

 

[EntoCraig]

You can, and I have. I was just trying to point out its can be as simple or complex as you want to make it. You can go with certain methods, or create your own. There are plenty of 'guidelines' that you can follow, and make adjustments depending on your specific tank.

 

[Prometheus]

there's so much to learn... both of ya'll are so helpful and full of info, thanks!

i loved my biology and botany classes so im one of those people that actually finds this stuff more on the side of being really interesting rather than scary and boring, so im up for learning about this stuff! the key thing to remember with me working on my planted tanks is im on a budget for right now (college student). so don't be discouraged from telling me about the more expensive stuff like CO2 systems, its just that i might not save up the miscellaneous money to buy it for a while. this tank setup that i have at the moment would cost hundreds of dollars if not over a thousand to replace it right now, but i didnt put it together overnight, i put it together over a period of years. and in another year i just might add something like a CO2 system, so just keep that in mind.

so... im taking the 29 gallon and making it a long term project tank! yay! i should probably make a new thread about it... a "journal". yep, i think that's what ill do, but im gona think about what direction im going to take it in before i do that. until then... lets get back to what this thread is about.

okay so the reason it has been suggested that i remove one of the bulbs in that fixture is because the extra output from running both at the same time stimulates the growth of algae?... and that's true because... the plants that i have at the moment only use up so much light in the process of photosynthesis in combination with using up, simultaneously, vital nutrients in the water column and sand in an effort to convert those nutrients into usable sugars that are used by the plants other cells to sustain a healthy life? ... and with that high level of light combined with the particular level of nutrients in the tank, there happens to be enough extra, of both, to also sustain the growth of algae in addition to plant growth. so in order to prevent algae growth i need to either reduce the level of light or reduce the level of nutrients, and since im not using ferts (at the moment, you guys are kinda convincing me to start doing stuff like that though) the only other option is to reduce the level of lighting. is that right? and before you answer that leads me to the next question... if that is correct, couldn't i fix the algae problem by also adding more plants?... in doing so lower the level of nutrients?

so my options for getting rid of algae are:

add more plants to use up the extra nutrients in the water column and starve the algae.

remove a bulb to prevent algae from performing photosynthesis at a high enough level to grow.

correct?