Never Fertilized Before

[Sprucegruve]

Hey I'm thinking about starting a 30 gallon tank with a good variety of plants. I have never had more than 1 plant and some moss in my tanks so I never felt the need for fertilization or co2. I have looked around on the Internet for information and found some good stuff.I just want to know the difficulty of maintaining a medium-highly planted aquarium from someone that deals with it first hand

Thanks in advance

Steve

[jvision]

I use a hybrid between the MCI and EI methods (both have been pinned in this forum)... basically, I used MCI to find out how much I needed, and now I dose everyday about that much (more if I haven't pruned in a while, less if I just hacked everything back)

[jcgd]

If you run it with plants only while you mess around and fiddle it's easy. I'll try to go over everything as cut and dry as I can.

Going pressurized is truely awesome. Amazing plant growth and it helps many of your algae problems. You want your target ppm around 30ppm and it's easiest if you have a drop checker. The hard part is getting your bubble count set so that the levels are good during the day and not too high at night. You usually have a air stone run at night to gas off extra Co2, or a solenoid on a timer to shut if off before lights out.

Lights are tricky. Everyone uses the watt per gallon rule and think they need way more light than they really do. IMO the WPG rule is garbage. With T8s and PC is could be accurate on a mid size tank, from around a 20 high to a 90 gallon. But with T5HO, MH and LED that people are using quite often these days, on many setups, one watt per gallon could be lots of light. For example, my 90 gallon with 24" of height has two 54 watt T5HO hung 8" above the rim and I can grow most stem plants at the bottom and every low-med type plant. High light stem plants may not do too well down by the substrate. I consider my tank low-med at the substrate and high light for the surface. It's a tall tank to the light varies greatly depending on the depth.

On a 30 gallon I would recommend something like a 2x 24w T5HO. A 2x39 watt may work but you would want a fixture where you could individually control the bulbs because you would probably need a very short photo period, or else run one bulb at a time. Possibly two for a mid day burst for a few hours. You should fiddle with the height and possibly raise it up to get full coverage of the tank, as well as take the edge off. These bulbs are bright!

Many people, myself included, have run into many headaches regarding light. More light should be the last thing you get, not the first. Most people go through this cycle: More light, more algae, add fertz, more algae, add co2, add more co2, back to balance. You should Be running co2 if you want to have high light, fast growth. I personally think co2 is great even with low light. It's just all around awesome and helps you find that balance more easily.

Dosing can be tricky. It can also be easy. I EI dose which is a method that pretty much adds as much fertilizer to the tank at all times so that the plants have more co2 than they can use, more fertz than they can use and the lighting is the only growth limiting factor. You have to make sure you don't overdose to unsafe levels for the fish, but there are people who have ball-parked the measurements for you. If CO2 or fertz are the limiting factors you can easily run into algae problems. You will find that a properly balanced tank is one of the cleanest you'll ever see. For example, I have scraped my glass once in the 8 or so months my tank has been running.

If you want to go the low tech route, you will want a little less light, and you can dose the same way, but with much smaller amounts. Low tech tanks can be very rewarding and also very low maintenance. It's nice not having to trim every few days. At the same time, I have always found that starting with a couple plants and adding to it slowly can be troublesome unless you start with less lighting and fertz as you go. I always try to get as much plant matter in the tank from day one. It tends to help with algae as well. Without the plants to compete with, the algae will grow where there is not much competition. What I'm trying to say is your lights and fertz have to be balanced to the plant mass in the tank. If you are going to dose somewhat erratically, I recommend making a flourish like mix with dry fertz, or just Seachem product themselves and follow the recommended dose and tweak it as needed. I've found that excel is nice (but DO NOT overdose. I don't recommend the after water change dose. Too high), and in Calgary water I usually have a potassium deficiency. So I've usually used those in conjunction with flourish complete. I used to toss in iron every once in a while cause the plants colour right up.

I started with planted tanks at 14 in 2004 and I have not found a new favorite yet so I definitely recommend giving it a go.

[Sprucegruve]

_{thanks this will get me off to a really good start,i really appreciate all of the time and info jvision and jcgd}