Nano heavily planted tank /w high lighting

P

PurpleSmurf

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May 4, 2005
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Okay, so college isn't that far off and I've been trying to figure out what I can do in terms of pets / aquaculture in the dorm room. So far I've thought of:

- Nano reef
- Fire bellied newts / paddle tailed newts vivarium
- Other amphibian vivarium
- Nano heavily planted tank

And I'm really leaning towards the newt vivarium and/or planted tank, but I wasn't sure of a few things. If I do a heavily planted tank I'm going to want to grow things like ludwigia. Will CO2 be necessary or even practical? What would I need to grow high maintaintence plants in a 10gal?
 
Check out Excel from Seachem. It's a liquid source of carbon. Or the carbo-block thingies may do the trick instead of DIY/Pressurized CO2. No xp with either so can't comment on them.
Big tank, little tank, plants still need nutrients including CO2.
 
I have some excel and flourish, but I'll probably buy a gallon of it before I go up. Anything else I'd need besides the liquid ferts?

I'd like to do pressurized, but I've heard it's very unstable in a small tank. Without fish what ate the dangers of over dosing the CO2?
 
Without fish you'd be hard pressed to overdose CO2. There's always the danger of pumping in so much that your pH gets too low for the plant life, but short of that, crank it up. Prior to adding fish to a new planted tank it's not unusual to seek 50ppm CO2 to give the plants as much of a boost as possible.

Stability shouldn't be a problem with pressurized, it's kind of "set it and forget it" in that after carefully adjusting the proper amount of input and making sure that it's an appropriate level the input should remain constant until the tank starts running low. On a nano tank I'd guess a 5 lb tank would last a couple years, at least.

Excel would probably be perfect though, as long as you remember to keep dosing. Given the small size of the tank it should be fairly cost effective.
 
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Well, after college I'm going to hop right into a 180gal or 200gal that will also have CO2, so I think just getting a canister now will be best in the long run.

But I'll try excel for a bit, I have two bottles of it left.

Thanks guys.

Edit: I don't suppose a salamder or newt would survive in a tank with 50ppm CO2?
 
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Depending on the animal they vary between being bettas with legs or being a lizard who wets its skin every now an then.
 
Well, and take this with a grain of salt understanding that I don't know anything about them, if they don't breathe through the water then high dissolved CO2 levels in the water probably won't have any adverse effects.

However, if you're driving up dissolved CO2, there's the risk that CO2 levels above the water also rise. Depending on the plant uptake of CO2 and O2 production there might be an issue with CO2 levels just above the water line. So on that note I think that I, personally, would keep my CO2 levels lower. But if it's a vivarium and a lot of plant matter is above the surface there's less need for high CO2 levels anyway, right?
 
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