Adding Plants

[morleyz]

OK, I've seen a lot of info about all plant tanks/starting plant tanks, but I haven't seen a lot about good procedures for planting an established FO tank. Anyone have any good suggestions or links?

I also have the option of moving all my fish into a separate tank and starting from scratch. Would that be a good or bad idea? I plan on keeping my fancy guppies in there.

Thanks.

[125gJoe]

You know...go for 80% planted, to help prevent algae outbreaks. :) Then later on you can cut back on some of the plantings..

[Cichlid Woman]

If I had it to do over and had the bucks, I probably would have set up my 38-gal tank with a Fluorite (spelling?) substrate instead of gravel. It's much better for plants that get their nutrients through their roots. My plants are doing okay in a gravel substrate, probably because I add weekly doses of plant fertilizer (I was using Tetra's FloraPride, but I've switched to Flourish because everyone seems to like it so much). From what I've read, if you start with a Fluorite substrate you don't have to add liquid fertilizers at all. Additionally, the liquid fertilizers only help plants that take nutrients through their leaves.

So ... if setting up from scratch is an option, you might think about Fluorite for a substrate. (I wonder if it gets the water really cloudy when you add/move plants around, though.)

If you stick with gravel, just be sure to add fertilizers regularly. Also, have you got sufficient light? (I don't think it has to be as high as 2 watts per gallon, but anything over 1 watt per gallon would be nice.) And if your water's really high (or low) pH, be sure to select plants that do well in those parameters. I've found that most plants get along fine in a wide range of pH, but if you've got extremes, it can ... er ... "melt" some plants.

You will LOVE a planted tank. I'd never be without one. Have fun!

-- Pat

[morleyz]

Sounds like I might be better off starting over. I already have a bag of flourite. Which brings up a newbieish sort of question...should I go all flourite or just mix it with a different substrate (sand, gravel, etc.)?

Another question after looking at most of the procedure for starting a plant tank from scratch. They all say to be very careful about adding fish...but I don't think I should have any cycling problems as I have a fully established filter. Would I be OK adding all of my fish at once? My plan is to transfer my fish into a 20G temporarily while I change substrates and transfer them back afterward. We're talking about 10 little fish tops...should I be concerned at all?

[DaveTMD]

Hi Morleyz,

I'm a newbie so I'm just going to comment on my recent experience. I have a 36 gallon Bow Front and used (3) 15.4 lb Bags of florite as substrate. 100% no mix. This gave me about 2.5 inches as a base.

My only caution. I read so much about not rinsing the heck out of the florite because it removed some of its benificial qualities that I was gun shy during this process. I used a pillow case (hope my wifes not reading this, ha,ha) and that seems to work well. But after adding it to the tank and adding water using a Large Pyrex dish (man, now I really hope she's not reading this) to keep from stiring up the bottom I was left with a big mud puddle for 2 days until the dust settled down. It took some serious gravel vacuming to get the small dust out of the tank. 7 days later after adding some plants I still had some small dust clouds form when pushing the roots down. I'm not sure what the magic rinsing time is but I just thought I'd bring it up. My .02 worth.

Dave T

By the way my plants are doing great! I have new growth on all additions and things seem to be doing well. No additional fertilizers have been added. just over 1 watt per gallon light.

[djlen]

Morley, two suggestions, first don't mix the Flourite with other substrate unless the other substrate is very similar in color, because they will tend to bleed into one another and I personally don't like the look of that. Second, go to your local Home Depot and pick up a 5 gallon paint strainer and if you don't have one a 5 gallon paint bucket. It makes washing Flourite MUCH easier and is very effective. IMO it doesn't take anything away from the effectiveness of this product to wash it well. If you don't wash it well, trust me, you've never seen such cloudyness as flourite can make. After washing put it into the tank and then add water. And when you move or take out plants doesn't make any more of a cloud problem than any other substrate. And I've never seen plants root as well before using it.
Len

[Bruddah Chrispy]

I've got a fairly-heavily planted, low-light, 29g which I started as a FO. I just gradually added a plant or two along the way. Being a complete newbie when I started the tank I really didn't think about what I was doing. The guy at the lfs did tell me that I'd need a 2-3 inches of substrate if I ever wanted to add plants so I put that in. My biggest mistake was in not choosing low-light plants initially. I slowly killed an Amazon Sword and a half-dozen cabomba before I really got going with the watersprites, lutia, and java fern.

[morleyz]

Thanks for the tips...I think I'm just going to wing it with what I know...what the worst that can happen? I kill a few plants while I learn...that's been the story of my aquaria career.

[Matak]

What does FO mean?

[MMX]

Originally posted by Matak
What does FO mean?

FO = Fish Only. ;)

[Matak]

Tanks 'aplenty :)

[carpguy]

I've heard that you can mix flourite up to about 50% with regular gravel before you really start to lose the benefits. I think folks mostly do this to economize on the big tanks. I used a sand/laterite blend and after a few weeks the plants are doing well. The next tank is going to be 100% flourite, so I can't compare yet, but the flourite folk all seem very enthusiastic about it.

I used about a pound a gallon to get maybe 1.5 to 3+ depth in a 30g.

I kicked up a huge cloud of sediment when I did the massive post-fishless waterchange. Sediment settled on my heater, creating a hotspot and causing it to shatter -- so be careful when its cloudy. Filtered out in a few days, cleaning the filter twice a day.

I wouldn't think you'd have any trouble with the remodel with a cycled filter and the plants especially with the low bioload. I introduced plants and fish at the same time following fishless, fully stocked on fish after about a week. No problems.

If you're looking for a weed to outcompete the algae while you get established ambulia (limnophilla sessiflora) must be seen to be believed. I think I'm going to throw out half of it tomorrow -- it doubles in volume every few days, looks a lot like cabomba. You can almost see it growing, at least an inch or two a day. I started with maybe a half dozen 6 inch stems. I now have over a dozen plants, several with multiple stems all at or near the surface two weeks later. I cut it back on Thursday or Friday and will again tomorrow.

Good luck with the transition, you'll love it.