Newbie to planted tanks, cycling advice?

tekonus

tekonus

...meh?
Nov 20, 2008
471
1
16
Long Island, NY
Hi all, I'm new to this forum, and to some degree fishkeeping. I've only ever kept goldfish before, and they are quite easy to care for as I'm sure you all know. I am looking to set up a 10g freshwater tank in my bedroom to have some live plants and some small community fish in it. I've heard there is a way to cycle a tank without having an ammonia spike if you have plants... but I've also heard that you need a good amount of plant coverage in the tank to accomplish this. Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm not really looking to have more than 1/4 of the tank surface with plants. I don't have any experience with live plants, so I'm not really sure of how to go about this. Any advice or step by step guides I may have missed in my searches of these forums? Any help at all would be appretiated...
 
I suggest you make a post in the planted tanks forum to inquire about plants and there needs to help you determine what ones you want and what care you will need to provide for them.

As far as cycling using plants to avoid ammonia spikes, ana a silent cycle, first you will need to get the plants in the tank, depending on how many you have, you will need to stock your tank very slowly and monitor your water parameters. Its a fine line between keeping it a silent cycle and ending up haveing to do water changes because you added fish to fast.

With only a couple plants in the tank, I would reccomend you adding one fish at the time, keep your eye on water parameters using a liquid test kit, after a week, if there is no spikes in ammonia or nitrite, add another fish,. Do this until you have stocked your tank..
 
What is your experience with goldfish?
As far as a 10g planted tank goes,there are some options for you.You can either have a lowlight tank,lowlight with DIY CO2,or medium to highlight pressurized CO2.The later is the most expensive,but also gives you a wider variety of plants to keep.The right lighting is the key to keeping any aquarium plants IMO,so when you decide what kind of planted tank you want,you can go from there.
A fishless cycle would be the easiest way to go no matter what kind of plants you decide on.
 
I will leave specific plant advice to the green thumbs aroudn here, but coming from a newbie my best advice would be to buy the best equiptment you can the first time around. I have tried to skimp on equiptment and in the end I wound up buying the slightly more costly items anyway..
 
jpappy789 said:
You need a very heavily planted tank in order to have a silent cycle.
Click to expand...

The one qualifier I would add to this is that the plants should be fast-growing, heavy nutrient eaters -- wisteria, for example. They'll clean the water faster than an equal bunch of, say, java fern. :idea:

I did a silent cycle of my 10g, heavily planting it with wisteria, bacopa, cyptocorynes, and java fern, and the initial load was light: one betta and a couple of shrimp. No problems whatsoever with ammonia or nitrites. In fact, the nitrates never got above ten.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys. some of the reasons I liked the idea of silent cycling with plants were that I
1.) like the look of a tank with decent plant coverage
2.) am not very comfortable with adding thinigs like pure ammonia directly into my water

The only thing that I am uneasy about with planted tanks is the whole CO2 aspect. Are there certain plants that I won't need to do CO2 injection with? Yes, I know this probably belongs in the plant forum. I figured they were newbie questions though, and this IS the newbie forum...
 
Pure ammonia wont hurt your tank, its the same thing that fish produce..:)

Yes there are plants that you wont need co2 with. The addition of co2 is light dependant. In other words if you go for high light you will need the addition of co2, if you stay with low light, and medium light if managed right, you wont need co2.

You would probably recive more indepth info on the types of plants, etc if you make a post in the planted forum, perhaps make one there concerning the types of plants and your quesstions regarding co2 and link back to this thread in your post :)
 
irishspy said:
The one qualifier I would add to this is that the plants should be fast-growing, heavy nutrient eaters -- wisteria, for example. They'll clean the water faster than an equal bunch of, say, java fern. :idea:

I did a silent cycle of my 10g, heavily planting it with wisteria, bacopa, cyptocorynes, and java fern, and the initial load was light: one betta and a couple of shrimp. No problems whatsoever with ammonia or nitrites. In fact, the nitrates never got above ten.
Click to expand...

Good point irishspy...I'd also like to add hornwort to that list but it's not the most appealing plant IMO.

Blueiz said:
Pure ammonia wont hurt your tank, its the same thing that fish produce..:)

Yes there are plants that you wont need co2 with. The addition of co2 is light dependant. In other words if you go for high light you will need the addition of co2, if you stay with low light, and medium light if managed right, you wont need co2.

You would probably recive more indepth info on the types of plants, etc if you make a post in the planted forum, perhaps make one there concerning the types of plants and your quesstions regarding co2 and link back to this thread in your post :)
Click to expand...

I agree with blueiz. I'd be more tempted to try it out with pure ammonia rather than live fish. Just a risk I wouldn't like to take.
 
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