Air stone with plants bad?

rjrevers said:
lighting is standasrd/ 2 15w flourescent/ge fresh/saltwater bulbs and 2 blue cold cathodes. lighting is very low. I hope to eventually get a 48" strip to bring it up to 40w possibly a twin 48 but not likely to be able to do much more.
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You'll be at low light until you get to about 90 or 100 watts of lighting. Up until then, you won't need any forms of injected CO2 (yeast or pressurized CO2), but you will need Excel, as fish_newby said. It's going to get pricey, too, after a while...but considering you're growing java fern, anubias, and swords, you can probably dose 1/2 to 2/3 or 3/4 of the recommended amounts of Excel and probably get away with it.

Your blue cathodes won't do anything for plant growth. If you like the color, keep them, if you don't just turn them off to save on electricity.
 
thanks for the info. I thought I had heard w/ low lights co2 is not needed as much cause of the slow growth but want to make sure. I did notice that when i was using the ferts according to directions brown algea started to form. I started just to throw in a little now then and no algea problems lately. Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade lighting at some point and do a little more planting and growing rather than just maintaining but I wanted to give it a try this time and see what happens. I really like having live plants in there.
 
until you get more lighting i see no reason why to worry about ferts or co2. if your going to get the 48" shop lights get T8 bulbs. they might be less watts but they put out more light. even with shop lights its still going to be low light unless your looking to put 4 bulbs in there.

as for the air stone its not really doing anything. if your not going for the look you might as well take it out. the hobs surface agitation puts all the o2 the tanks need. i dont have any air bubbles in any of my tanks.
 
Mgamer20o0 said:
if your going to get the 48" shop lights get T8 bulbs. they might be less watts but they put out more light.
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More light than what?

T5 > PC > T8 > T12 in terms of lighting efficiency.
 
Mgamer20o0 said:
until you get more lighting i see no reason why to worry about ferts or co2. if your going to get the 48" shop lights get T8 bulbs. they might be less watts but they put out more light. even with shop lights its still going to be low light unless your looking to put 4 bulbs in there.

as for the air stone its not really doing anything. if your not going for the look you might as well take it out. the hobs surface agitation puts all the o2 the tanks need. i dont have any air bubbles in any of my tanks.
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wow....that is low light
I would pass on the ferts or sure, but ALL plants need a carbon source...no exceptions. You will need to dose excel then. If you do not, you will have melting plants and some algae. As for the airstone, you can run it as I said before.
 
Given the low plant load and very low lighting, I honestly wouldn't worry about adding an extra carbon source. I can't see the plants becoming carbon limited with this setup.
 
I figure maybe i'll pick up some excel and just use it every other day or every couple days and see what happens. So far they are keeping ok. I don't really expect them to really grow considering the lighting so I got plants that fit well sizewise right now rather than ones expect to grow in. I just hope to at least maintain them where they are at now. I picked what i believe to be low light plants hopefully, except the sword, that was put in as silver dollar food but this one they stopped eating and have left alone. I normally throw in a vallinseras(or what ever they're called), or a sword plant and they devour it within a couple days.
 
when using the flourish excel do I have to watch ph or does it only change with co2 injection
 
rjrevers said:
when using the flourish excel do I have to watch ph or does it only change with co2 injection
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Excel won't have any effect on your water parameters.

Still, if you want to see some growth, I'd think about lighting first.
 
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