beginner questions

[rebeccarollers]

Hello everyone just a few questions that you might beable to help with. Here's a few details on my setup: I have a 55 gallon aquarium with a total of 80 watts (full spectrum) lighting which is kept on for about 12 hours a day. For filtration I have a Fluval 404 canister, and a proquatics 300 power filter, and a co2 injector hooked up. The water temp is about 76 degrees. Ph is about 7.2

1. For a bedding all I use is a small aquarium gravel should something like laterite be added to it?

2. When adding plants to the aquarium what is recommended do most people actually plant the roots in the gravel or is it best to leave the metal band around the plant and place on top of the gravel and let it root itself?

3. I see a lot reference to kh (mine is about 54 mg/l) how important is gh (my gh is about 680 mg/l)?

4. Is there a plant that is good for a beginner and is easy to find that spreads across the aquarium rather than grow upwards?

5. Does everyone do weekly water changes of about 25 percent?

Well I think that is it for now. Have a great day.

[Cheech]

Hi.

1st off, it might be a good idea to upgrade your lighting. Right now you have a little over 1.5 watts per gallon, which will limit the amount of plants you can keep in the tank.

1: small aquarium gravel is fine, but if you can, add some flourite and/or laterite to the gravel. It will make a nice difference.

2: Don't leave the metal band on the plant. Remove it, and stick the roots in the gravel. I trim the roots of any new plants too.. you might want to do the same..

3: I had a successfull 90 g heavily planted tank, never having done tests on kh or gh.... Maybe I was just lucky, but I don't know much when it comes to that... Sorry... :)

4: Anubias, java ferns, java moss are just a few beginner plants/moss that do well.. Except, once the moss starts groing, it doesn't stop.. Fern as well.. Anubias is a slower growing plant.

I did monthly water changes. Sometimes I'd even wait 2 months before doing so. Don't forget to top off your water though,, :)

Good luck dude...


cheech

[djlen]

The lower growing Anubias are neat plants especially for for grounds, but they are slow growing. Also, many of the Cryptocornes are great in low light and don't grow too upright.
If you can afford it Flourite is great stuff for a substrate for plants. In addition to it's value with holding nutrients, it makes planting easy as it is relatively fine and holds them down where many substrates don't.
Len

[Richer]

Adding laterite to your gravel will help, but apparently you will need to replace the laterite every once in awhile. Seachem's Fluorite is a much more permanent solution.

In opposition to cheech's comments. Your lighting is fine. If you stick to low/moderate light plants, your setup will work perfectly. Just don't expect the accelerated growth that high lighted systems have. If its not broken, don't go around trying to fix it =)

kh readings are important to determine your CO2 concentrations as you probably know. gh isn't referred to as much because... well, most plant growers don't need to know what their gh is to grow healthy plants.

For a low/moderate lighted plant tank, anubias will work great as a carpet plant. Although they are slightly more expensive than your average stem plant, they stay low to the ground, don't grow at an insane rate (perfect the ppl too lazy to do weekly trimmings), are not demanding, and are pretty hardy IME. I'm currently planning out a 20 gallon bowfront plant tank. Its gonna have 36 watts of lighting and have various anubias variaties as the main plant.

Crap, I hit the submit button by accident.

One more thing, if you are going to think about adding more light in the near future (beyond 2 watts/gallon), make sure you can easily keep your CO2 concentrations at around 15-20 ppm. As far as I can see, that shouldn't be a problem for you presently.

HTH
-Richer