well i am new to planted tanks. right now i have a 29 gallon tank with 2 diy co2 bottles, regular gravel but will switching to flourite in the near future, and the only chemical i have is florapride. i will be placing a order this week some time so i a looking for some input on other chemicals i need to please feel free to put ur input in. also where can i find a co2 diffuser the only one that i can find is on ebay and they are from japan. also with the Hagen Bubble Counter work or not. i know it has a diffuser on the end of it. so please help me out
chemical questions
- Thread starter truck_317
- Start date
You ar elooking for fertilizers, not necessarily chemicals 
. Before you look to far into co2 and ferts, we need to know more about your setup. Like what type of lighting you have, what do your nitrates typically run without adding ferts, what type of plants you have/want.
. Before you look to far into co2 and ferts, we need to know more about your setup. Like what type of lighting you have, what do your nitrates typically run without adding ferts, what type of plants you have/want.well nitrates are usually at 0ppm. im using 4 bright effects daylight 6500k using 13 watts but its replacing a old 60 wat bulb. i got them at walmart. the plants im looking at is java fern, cabomba, ludwiga, dwarf hair grass, and some other plants but i dont know the names of them. i do a 10-15 percent water change a week. i hope that helps ya
it uses 13w of electericty and it is replacing one of the old 60 watt house bulbs. do im guessing its only using 13 watts but its probley putting out 60 watts of lights. its just a normal house bulb heres the link. http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=79261-75774-017801997347&lpage=none
If you switched out an incandescent 60 watt bulb with a 13 watt cf bulb, the you have 13 watts of cf lighting.
You need to do a lot more research on the needs of a planted tank as far as lighting before you go much further with fertilizers and co2. The co2 is going to depend on the lighting and from your post, you are not sure what kind of lighting you have.
If I estimate correctly, you have about 20 watts of light over a 29 g tank. Going with the wattage per gallon rule of thumb, you dont have enough light to warrant doing co2.
You ar elooking for fertilizers, not necessarily chemicals
Fertilisers are chemicals. The reason I raise this is that we can often get into a sort of "artificial chemical vs natural additive" mindset which actually has little basis in science; whether you derive (e.g.) nitrate from a "natural" bacterial process or from a chemical reaction in a lab makes no difference; the ion is exactly the same. To the scientist, everything is a chemical or mixture of chemicals.
Good call on the lighting vs. CO2 thing. I've seen it claimed before now that any CO2 is always better than no CO2; this is not so - if the lighting is so poor that the plants can not fully use the equilibrium CO2 which is already present, then they're not going to be able to use any addition CO2 either.
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Quick question, how long has the tank been cycles, what living organisms other than plants are in the tank? Just trying to figure out your bio-load. Also whats the rating on your light fixture? be careful not to get a bulb that's going to melt the fixture or worse.
As far as chemicals vs ferts, I'm sorry to disagree with the statement. Yes the ion is the same, however, the impurities and waste produced by biological organisms is different that those produced in a lab. As the chemists prayer goes, "Oh lord, why cant my chemical systhesis be as effecient as that by simple bacteria"