My first planted tank, a journal

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ffmurray

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Oct 6, 2014
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Ithaca NY
My wonderful wife gave me a 36 gallon bow-front for my birthday. I have decided to try my hand at a planted tank because I love how they look. Ive decided to go with a sand substrate because it was cheap and available. I could not find any pool filter sand so i bought "washed" play sand.
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I thought I would have to change the water a few times to get it to clear out, I have bought unwashed sand that was cleaner. Unfortunately I do not have a hose on the outside of my house so setting a buvket under the hose bib and ignoring it for a while while the water ran was not an option. I ended up running a hose from my sink and running my siphon out the window and using the sink to try and match the flow of the two. an hour later the tank was almost sort of clear.

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ffmurray

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Oct 6, 2014
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Ithaca NY
we went to the local "pet box" store and I bought some plants. a couple of bunched of anarchris, some mondo grass, a moss ball, a crested java fern, two amazon swordtails, and some other smaller plants that i don't know what they are but I hope they are actually aquatic plants, once the water clears up some more Ill get some pictures of the rest of them and hopefully I can figure out what they are. Ive put in a large hardwood root that I cut out of a fallen tree in the forest around my house. I peeled the bark and boiled it and its being held down with some rocks at the moment.
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The plants are just kind of floating around at the moment and ill get them down once the water clears up enough I can see whats going on. Any tips on securing the plants or aquascaping with what I have would be greatly appreciated.

I plan on dosing ammonia to cycle the tank before i put fish in, I just haven't found any without additives locally. How long will the plants be good for without a source of nitrogen

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FishFanMan

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I would keep changing water until you can at least see the back of the tank. That cloud greatly reduces the amount of light to your plants. Then take the filter pads from your other tank and squeeze them in this tank to transfer some BB into it. Your plants would be fine until the tank is cycled. You should be able to push the stem plants into sand when the sand settles and compacts a bit. Have you though about getting another filter to augment the little one you have?

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SnakeIce

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Just a note though, ammonia and light for plants is generally not desired in a planted tank because the light for plants is enough to grow algae well. If your plants can't absorb all the ammonia you put in algae would love to take up the difference and can do so faster than your bacteria cycle can develop to deal with it.

The usual plan for planted tank is either cycle it before you put in plants with no light on, or "silent" cycle the tank by putting in enough plants that the plants themselves can mop up all the ammonia given off by the usual gradual additions of fish.
 

ffmurray

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Oct 6, 2014
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Ithaca NY
Have you though about getting another filter to augment the little one you have?
Ive been looking at canisters like the SunSuns, but havent decuded between those and an Aquaclear, I have one on my other tank and like it a lot. But either way Im going to be getting rid of the aquaclear filter that came with the tank

Just a note though, ammonia and light for plants is generally not desired in a planted tank because the light for plants is enough to grow algae well. If your plants can't absorb all the ammonia you put in algae would love to take up the difference and can do so faster than your bacteria cycle can develop to deal with it.
good to know, I have not started dosing ammonia, so I guess I wont.

I did some more water changes and on the last fill I used water from my other fish tank. Its well cycled so showing no Ammonia or Nitrites, but about 4ppm of Nitrates, Should I not do that in the future? will that lead to an algea bloom?
 

ffmurray

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Oct 6, 2014
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Ithaca NY
plant-id-1.jpgplant-id-2.jpg

This was in with the buches of anacharis that I bought from petsmart, I have no idea what it is or if its even an aquatic plant. any help would be greatly appreciated

plant-id-1.jpg plant-id-2.jpg
 

SnakeIce

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Nitrogen is needed and plants can use ammonia, which is a form of Nitrogen (N), but algae is a significant risk with that. Because of that some N in the form of nitrate is the usual method of feeding plants. Unless you have very sensitive fish a target of 10-20 ppm Nitrate is typical in planted tanks depending on how much light you have and how fast your plants are increasing in mass.

The three main nutrients, below Carbon, are Nitrogen Potassium and Phosphorus (N, K, P). Calcium Magnesium and a list of trace minerals would round out a complete nutrition listing for plants. Now while I listed those in relative order of importance a shortage of any one of those would limit growth at the level of the element in shortest supply. If you would picture a barrel with each stave being a different nutrient you could imagine that the barrel will only hold liquid up to it's shortest stave. Plant growth can be limited just as that barrel's capacity would be limited if one stave was really short.

One causative factor in algae problems is when one major nutrient dips to near 0 and plant growth slows. Some kinds of algae are almost diagnostic as to which nutrient ran out.
 

ffmurray

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Oct 6, 2014
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Ithaca NY
Thank you snakeice, that was a good, thorough and well put explanation, I appreciate that.

I have very very little knowledge of aquatic plants and their needs and care. I would love to know more. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good book that I can read up on the subject, the more thorough and detailed the better. Or even a couple of books to read in series from the beginner stuff to the more advanced concepts. I have been reading some online articles and have seen some things but would love the input of this community, there seems to be many very knowledgeable people here.

I have a bunch more pictures and progress but I haven't had a chance to go through and post them. I will soon.

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SnakeIce

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What I explained to you I learned from the guy that runs The Barr Report site. He has nuked or killed more plants than anyone out there just to figure out the whys of how things work in aquatic systems. Start with this post and read further once you understand that this is just another way to explain what I did above.
http://www.barrreport.com/showthread.php/62-The-Estimative-Index-of-Dosing-or-No-Need-for-Test-Kits

The other site I use is
http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/

The one book I reach for most on plants is Aquarium Plants by Christel Kasselmann
http://www.amazon.com/Aquarium-Plants-Christel-Kasselmann/dp/1575240912

If you feel rich the baensch aquarium atlas books have some plant profiles in each volume, and there is at least one species in the first volume not in the above book. So even though the books are not aimed at plants primarily they do have value.
 
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