Plant density needed to cycle a tank?

Sneakerpimp

Sneakerpimp

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Nov 25, 2015
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It's been two weeks now of trying to keep ammonia, nitrite and nitrates down in my 5g spec. It has two guppies and a dario dario.

So far I've added three anubis and what I believe are 9 Cryptocoryne wendtii. They all relatively small.

How many more plant and types I could add to improve water parameters?

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Also just tested 300 alkalinity and ph about 8.

This is too high for plants as I understand. What should I do?
 
I would not mess with the water chemistry.

Stem plants use the most take up the most nutrients, so some stem plants would help.
 
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tanker said:
I would not mess with the water chemistry.

Stem plants use the most take up the most nutrients, so some stem plants would help.
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Ok, so what I've got should be fine? The wendtii has some nice root networks and the look of it is growing on me(hue hue).
 
It is possible to purchase enough growing plant ends to instant cycle a tank, but that can cost a bit more. Cryptocoryns grow slow enough that until they start to spread they won't make that much difference. Because they take several months to settle in that will be later.

For lower light tanks cryptocoryns are really nice though.
 
I love crypts. Those look lovely, but be aware they may suddenly "melt" on you: the leaves disintegrate and you think they've died off. Don't panic! This happens with crypts new to a tank. Provided everything else is ok, they'll soon grow back. Mine became a forest in a 10G tank. As for cycling, what you have looks nice. I'd recommend just being patient, rather than trying to force more plants in.
 
You'd need to have a LOT of fast growing plants to avoid cycling, like wall to wall. It basically allows you to "skip" the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate "cycle" as the plants use them in that order. Even slow growing plants have beneficial bacteria on their surfaces & will help.

Are you just feeding your 3 fish & keeping an eye on parameters, daily? That's called a "fishy cycle" & can work, just very slowly. The fishless cycling w/ammonia allows you to pretty much stock you tank all at once when fully cycled. But w/fish-in cycling you add fish very slowly (1 or 2 small fish) , test often & do frequent WCs. Remember any ammonia can cause permanent damage especially over .25ppm. You can also use Prime to "bind" ammonia for ~24 hours if you just can't do a WC.

The problem w/ fishy cycling is the possibility of introducing disease each time you add a fish & ammonia gill damage.

Your tank looks nice! Just checking, the anubias rhizomes (sideways "stem") aren't buried in the substrate but on top on it, right?
 
Toss in a big handful of water sprite and call it a day.
 
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Slappy*McFish said:
Toss in a big handful of water sprite and call it a day.
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Um, yeah, that works! lol In other words add some stupid fast growing easy plants to suck up extra nutrients. Also floating plants are good to start up to help shade the tank a bit till things get settled in better.
 
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