Rough Start to my Planted Aquarium

[Hurley]

Java ferns are pretty easy to grow. I kept mine in a low light, low maintenance tank without any problems. I just used Flourish Excel. Here's a picture of the tank before I broke it down:

If your plants are amazon swords, then they are root feeders and you are going to want to put root tabs underneath them. If you do that, you don't want to disturb the substrate for a couple weeks/months, because it will release the fertilizers into the water column and you will get an algae outbreak. Do you have a picture of the plants?

Do you just have the 3 plants? If so, I would recommend sticking with excel rather than DIY co2. I tried it for awhile and I hated it. Some people do great with it but I invested in pressurized co2 for my high tech tank.

 

[dansnyder]

Here's a tank pic. The plants can be seen in the center. I don't mind the CO2 reactor. I already have it up and running. If it causes problems I'll take it down. I'm going to try some fertilizer spikes. My main concern is keeping cost down so I'll shop around for a good deal. My goal is to add many more plants so I assume I'll need to leverage as many techniques to get things as healthy as I can.

 

[rockhoe14er]

put lots more plants in there. That's going to be a great looking tank btw.

 

[dansnyder]

Thanks

 

[dansnyder]

I'm trying Osmocote just to see what it's like.