Is it difficult to maintain plants in an aquarium? I must be honest, I don't want to get live plants if it means oodles of work.
Plants?
- Thread starter KeyLimePie
- Start date
I was kinda scared on keeping live plants too untill i got mine and hardly had to do much to keep it maintained.
It realy matters on what plants you want, some are hard to take care of but most are easy. All you need is good lighting and replanting here and there when your fish lifts them out the gravel for healthy looking plants, but if you want award winning looks yeah its alot of work with the co2 and all that.
I keep my amazon swords growing steady(cause i dont want them taking over the tank) and healthy green with just 1 24w incendescent(sp) light bulb( cause my 30gal flouresent(sp) hood didnt come yet)
-Q
It realy matters on what plants you want, some are hard to take care of but most are easy. All you need is good lighting and replanting here and there when your fish lifts them out the gravel for healthy looking plants, but if you want award winning looks yeah its alot of work with the co2 and all that.
I keep my amazon swords growing steady(cause i dont want them taking over the tank) and healthy green with just 1 24w incendescent(sp) light bulb( cause my 30gal flouresent(sp) hood didnt come yet)
-Q
Plants can be a lot of work. If you go for high light and co2, then yes its work. If you go for low, slow growing then no it’s fairly simple. Plants need two main things: light, and food. Light comes from your aquarium, and the food from the nitrates and other stuff you add.
In my low light 20g I wasn’t getting any growth in a hurry. So I got mad and added some more light and DIY C02. Now they grow but still isn’t too much work. All I have to do is trim once a month and replace the C02 every 2 weeks.
If you want to go on, post your tank size, and lighting.
In my low light 20g I wasn’t getting any growth in a hurry. So I got mad and added some more light and DIY C02. Now they grow but still isn’t too much work. All I have to do is trim once a month and replace the C02 every 2 weeks.
If you want to go on, post your tank size, and lighting.
As Kas sais, they can be a lot of work, I spend about an hour or more each week on my 33g pruning and rearranging. More lately because I was very busy and let CO2 run low so I had a lot of algae to deal with.
On the other hand, my 18g tank is planted with slow growing, shade tolerant plants (anubia, crypts, java) and has only the 15w fluo. light that came with the tank. They plants are healthy and grow very slowly. There's a tiny bit of algae in the tank, but it's mostly inconspicuous and is well within what I can tolerate
. This one just gets a 50% water change every week. The nutrients come almost solely from fish food/wastes. I do dose a little nitrate at water change time, but only because I've noticed that my plants are using up more nitrogen than phosphate, so I dose to prevent a BGA (blue-green algae) outbreak and to keep the plants healthy. I also dose some traces, but on such a low light tank, something as simple and uncomplicated as the stuff available at LFS' would do, I just do seperate dosing because I've already got all the gear for the high growth tank.
To sum up, a planted tank needn't be a lot of work. My low light tank looks great (to my eye), it doesn't photograph well because of the low lighting, so I had to use the flash, which washes out the depth, but hey...
On the other hand, my 18g tank is planted with slow growing, shade tolerant plants (anubia, crypts, java) and has only the 15w fluo. light that came with the tank. They plants are healthy and grow very slowly. There's a tiny bit of algae in the tank, but it's mostly inconspicuous and is well within what I can tolerate
. This one just gets a 50% water change every week. The nutrients come almost solely from fish food/wastes. I do dose a little nitrate at water change time, but only because I've noticed that my plants are using up more nitrogen than phosphate, so I dose to prevent a BGA (blue-green algae) outbreak and to keep the plants healthy. I also dose some traces, but on such a low light tank, something as simple and uncomplicated as the stuff available at LFS' would do, I just do seperate dosing because I've already got all the gear for the high growth tank.To sum up, a planted tank needn't be a lot of work. My low light tank looks great (to my eye), it doesn't photograph well because of the low lighting, so I had to use the flash, which washes out the depth, but hey...