Okay, would this work?

[pinballqueen]

Don't flame me please....

If I were to do a native tank, with native plants and fish, using natural light, would I really need to bother with co2 if I kept the water current down (or used plants from the area streams and such that are used to the strong currents, like branch mint or something)? Just trying to explore my options as far as cost-efficiency and time constraints go....

Also, how well do you figure native plant species would mix with store bought plants?

I know, I sound like a noob, but I never seriously considered a heavily planted tank before....

 

[fishhead]

Plants can survive without CO2 enrichment, but they do much better with it. Without CO2 you also often wind up having to fight algae more. If you look at natural systems, you will typically see a lot of algae.

>using natural light

were you going to keep it outdoors? If not then appropriate lighting is still critical.

>Also, how well do you figure native plant species would mix with store bought plants?

Many store bought species are native to various parts of the US - ludwigia, vals, bacopa, cabomba, etc. You still might want to consider quarantining them to protect from diseases, snails, and bugs, esp. nymphs - they can kill small fish.

This guy set up a really nice Texas biotope from collected plants. He won an award in the AGA 2001 biotope category, you might find some useful info on collecting plants on his site:

http://users.ev1.net/~SPITUCH/Steve's Page/Aquarium/aquarium intro.html'

 

[pinballqueen]

The house I am moving to has LOTS of windows, and I was trying to think of a setup that could utilize all of the natural light that comes in...with a planted tank, I wouldn't be quite as worried about a little bit of algae, in fact, I'm ready for some scraping (I made the mistake of putting a tank in front of a window before....) and understand that an algae bloom is in my future...I'll probably cheat on the "fully native" idea and add a pleco to take care of the algae.

I will be augmenting the natural light with flourescent light hoods, though, because I know that window-filtered light only just isn't going to cut it. Lucky for me, this is an old house with plain old glass windows, not low-e glass or anything....

I was considering gathering the plants and fish from the same location to avoid any disease problems, or do you think it really matters one way or the other?

 

[fishhead]

I bet creating a local biotope would be fun, and would save you on the fish/plant costs, though that is really the cheap part compared to tanks, stands, filters, lights, etc. I would love to do a tank with local fish/plants one day since there are a lot of great species of plants and fish in Austin/Hill Country, we even have Mexican Tetras in Barton Creek running through the middle of town, which is really cool. You might want to see if any University around there has set up a database of local plants or fish online so you can find out more about what's out there around you.

As far as your idea for a setup, I think you would still be much better off setting up CO2 (even if it is just a cheap yeast reactor) and adding higher light. Light through windows is just not the same as direct sunlight, and CO2 is a great help in keeping plants healthy.

If you did get algae you could cheat with an American Flag Fish, they are cheaper than Plecos around here (1-2 dollar range), and would not be as big a stretch for a biotope as a Plecostomus, as they live only a few states away from you in Fla. They do not scrape like a Pleco but they do a great job on hair algae. You could introduce some local snails as cleanup crew/algae cleaners as well, so long as you did not mind snails. While RamsHorns are not native to your area per se, they are invading waterways all over the US, so you you might find them, they are great in a planted tank.

>I was considering gathering the plants and fish from the same location to avoid any disease problems

I doubt it really matters. If you clean the plants well then they should not be a problem. A quick bleach dip would take care of most evil critters. thekrib.com has info detailing dipping plants. As for the fish, if you have a quarantine tank it would be a good thing, but you could always just take your chances if you don't, though you can wind up with awful parasites like roundowrms or gill flukes, or some disease could wipe them all out. Quarantine tanks are a good idea for this sort of setup IMHO.