Starting out with plants

absolutely agree with webcricket. My tap water has phosphates at 0.5 ppm and my fish will increase it to 1.0 ppm by the end of the week. Nitrates for me are 5 ppm out of the tap and it will increase to 10 ppm before my water changes, so I hardly need to dose those two as well!
 
OK, cool. I cleaned the inside of the tank thoroughly before I planted everything... there was hard green spot algae on the glass, so maybe I'm already lacking phosphates. Actually, the tap water shouldn't have any at all, that's supposed to be one of the things removed by the water conditioner.

Our city water sucks... bad. The reservoir is a lake, and they allow power boats on the lake... so we have traces of petroleum type chemicals in the water... A bit of trichlorethylene and tetrachlorethylene goes a long ways.... (If I remembered the chems right...) But they say it's a safe level....
 
CaptnDan said:
A bit of trichlorethylene and tetrachlorethylene goes a long ways....
Click to expand...
mmm, yummy. So do you treat your water or RO filter it or anything, to make it safer for your fish? I'd freak out if my fishies had to live in petrochemical water :(
 
The main line coming into the house goes through carbon first, then ion exchange resin. Then just to feed my paranoia, there's RO available on the cold water side, just have to tough it out on the hot water - no RO...

Hmmm.... I could switch from salt to potassium for regenerating the water conditioner... That might be beneficial...
 
Thanks CaptnDan for the info. I'm going to check out all of the real plants at the LFS in Lansing this weekend. I hope you're doing okay - it's awful to be in pain. p.s. You's guys sure stay up late :thud:
 
Ratherbe:

haha.. Actually it was an early night for me - I went to bed right after that post.

I think you'll really like the look that live plants give your tank - and the fish seem to really appreciate it too. They swim in and out among the leaves and stuff... It's really cool.
 
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I have no doubt that I'll like the live plants better. I've been kind of scared off from having them because it seems like it's pretty difficult to keep them alive, but I'm gonna give it a shot. It will be better for my fish too, in that I have clown loaches, and I'm always concerned that one of those darned plastic plants could hurt them. Clown loaches are so cool, they're all snooty until they're hungry - then they come looking for you wagging their tail fins.
 
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