Would liek to add a few plants

You do not “need” CO2 though it will help tanks at any light level. If you have few plants and a moderately stocked tank the C02 from fish respiration should provide enough carbon for your plants to grow well enough. If you do not plan to do CO2 it is important to keep your lighting below 2 wpg. Too much lighting without CO2 is a recipe for Algae. Also high light increases the plants demand for nutrients, Plants will quickly show signs of deficiency if they are provided with high lighting values without also providing CO2 & fertilizers. Keep the lighting Values modest and youy should do fine with the plants you have listed, they prefer lower light anyway. Ny anibus Which grew like crazy when I was below 1wpg has struggled ever since I went to 4.5 wpg.
Here Is a link that helped me to understand lighting differences.

Have fun.

unless you like really slow growing plants your going to want to have a decent amount of light, how big of a tank do you have? most tanks dont come with enough light to grow plants well so you are probably going to want to upgrade it... and add co2... and then get some ferts

read this ---> http://www.rexgrigg.com/

how much is co2 for a 10g?

Sal329 said:

Well I am moving very soon and I will be getting rid of everything in my tank and starting everything e all new except the filter. Well I would like to add just a few live plants in the tank. I am looking at, Anubias Nana, Amazon Sword, Java Fern and would like one that gets to be 12-18" tall. If I keep up to say 5-7 plants would I need to use CO2? As far as substrate I am not sure what to use I would like something black in color. My tank is 30" tall, what is a good light to get.
Thanks all

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the anubias nana and the java fern do not require a lot of light.and even tho CO2 would help, it wouldn't be necessary.

the swords do better with more light and CO2 but they can survive in a lower light environment..if you shoot for 1-2 wpg good plant light (more towards 2) you will be able to grow these plants.

for a black substrate look at eco-complete.

If you only want to buy a few plants, water sprite can be a good choice. It grows so quickly that it helps to out-compete algae.

I'm just thinking that with an aquarium that is 30" tall you may want to try something like a 2x55 watt cf lighting kit from ahsupply in a diy enclosure. I can't remember the dimensions of a 50g corner aquarium, but I think your going to need good reflectors to get as much light projecting downward as possible here. The problem with only buying a handful of plants to start with will be possible algae issues. For starting plants I would be thinking of having java fern attached to driftwood, 1 or 2 swords (not compacta swords), say 4-7 assorted crypts, and 2 or 3 italian vals. Something like rotala or anacharis might also be good to start with. Co2 shouldn't be necessary here, but a digital light timmer and patience would be handy to have. I'd start with 10 hours of lighting per day and dose flourish once a week. Where I live I find I also have to dose iron if I want my anacharis to grow. If it seems algae is going to be an issue then cut back to 9 hours of light, but you shouldn't go with less than 8 hours of light per day. As tall as your aquarium is your going to need decent lighting to penetrate, but if your plant load is small then you will most likely see algae taking over fast.