New Tank, plants?

Just set up basically my first tank, 29g is going to house a grass pickerel for 6 months atleast. I'm thinking I want jungle vals among a few other smaller plants maybe. Whats the most cost effective way to get plants going (specifically vals). I mean substrate, the process etc. If there is a smaller val that would be better in a 29 i'd be open to that also, Whatever y'all think would make good habitat for a grass pickerel.

I suppose I should add that I'm using a whisper 30-60 power filter plus I have an undergravel filter in place with a whisper 30-60 air pump. I got both of these with the tank, should I use the undergravel if I'm going to have plants?

Edited by star5328, 20 July 2010 - 11:43 AM.

I've set up tanks this way several times, and it grows val like crazy. I use dirt and sand, you can't get any cheaper than that!

First, cover the bottom of the tank with an inch of sand. You can buy play sand if you want, it's nice and clean, or you can go dig some up. I've always bought my sand, but that's just me.

Then get some topsoil. Either dig it up somewhere that there aren't any lawn or agricultural chemicals or buy an el-cheapo bag of topsoil at your local superstore. I've done both. You don't want any chemicals or fertilizers, and not too much organic material, like cow manure. Too much organic matter can be harmful and even deadly to the fish. You just want plain ole dirt. If it has clay in it, that's nice, too. Put in two inches of it.

Last cover the dirt with an inch of sand. That's it! Add any rocks or wood, and you are ready to plant.

Put a rock or a small plate or something in to pour water onto so it doesn't stir up the substrate, and add enough water to cover the sand an inch or two. Then start planting. Sometimes I stop and add more water, then plant some more, then fill the tank. Whatever you are comfortable with. I find it easier to plant a tank if it has some water, but not full.

If you are careful, the water won't be too awfully cloudy, but it won't be crystal clear, either. It takes a few days (week or two?) but bacterial films will develop and they will keep stuff from floating around. You will probably have some "new tank" algae for the first few weeks, but as the plants take off it should go away.

Edit: Just re-read your post. This method won't work with an undergravel filter. I don't use them. I would recommend the Whisper and an air driven sponge filter. The Whispers are good mechanical filters, but they are lousy bacterial filters.

Edited by schambers, 20 July 2010 - 07:20 PM.

I agree with schambers and would like to add some things.

A substrate that most people don't consider but that works surprisingly well is kitty litter. I have Walmart brand Special Kitty in my aquarium. It costs $4 for 40 pounds and, because it's baked clay, it is parasite and invertebrate free. What convinced me to add it to my tank was reading these two webpages:

1. A substrate analysis by a bored fish keeping chemist named Jamie Johnson: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html
2. Pictures of a tank with kitty litter substrate: http://www.plantedta...trate-i-do.html

Make sure there are no additives to the kitty litter you buy; it has to be pure baked clay. Don't rinse it, just put it in the bottom of the aquarium and then place a small bowl in it and fill the tank by pouring water into the bowl. If you pour kitty litter into an already filled tank, the water will be cloudy for several days but it will settle eventually. A mixture of kitty litter and some other substrate (gravel, crushed coral, etc) is best because that way the litter doesn't compact too much. You can add a layer of kitty litter to the setup described by schambers. It's a great replacement for sand because a single grain of sand between the magnetic algae scraper and the glass wall can scratch it; kitty litter is too soft to scratch glass.

Don't use an undergravel filter if you have plants. Plants need a small grained substrate like sand, soil, fluorite, vermiculite, or kitty litter. Those substrates aren't all that compatible with undergravel filters.

By the way, I buy my plants from aquabid.com and liveaquaria.com (in the pond section) because you can get a full tank's worth for very little expense.

Also, beware mystery AKA apple snails, plecos (plecostomus), and other "algae eaters". You won't have algae in your tank because plants outcompete algae for nutrients. If you add those animals, they might eat your plants.

And two last things: Lighting and CO2. It's easy to add extra lighting with a little trip to Home Depot. I bought myself a four foot long dual bulb compact fluorescent light for my 55 gallon tank for $30, including bulbs. That amount of lighting (two 24 inch aquarium hoods) would have cost me $80 for the hoods and $40 for the bulbs if I had gone to a pet store. And the Home Depot light is brighter (700 lumens per bulb, 5000 K, full spectrum. Two bulbs for $8. You can't beat that.)

Carbon dioxide injection is super easy. Just get an empty 2 Liter of soda pop, some airline tubing ($2), some baker's yeast ($2), some sugar ($2) and a CO2 diffuser (I bought mine from aqmagic.com specifically http://aqmagic.com/s...e5da2e1670eeb67 for $15. I see that it costs $9 now.). Then buy a CO2 test kit from Red Sea Labs (they have the easiest test kit. I've compared them. Here's a link: http://www.google.co...0CAcQ8wIwADgA#p )
and make sure your levels stay below 30 ppm.

Instructions for Do It Yourself CO2: http://www.plantedta...IY-Yeast-CO2/7/
Getting the cap airtight is the part people mess up the most. You don't need sealant, like how that DIY CO2 website I just linked you to above says to do. Just cut the air line tube on a diagonal and then pull the tube through the hole. Alight from http://forum.simplyd...ead.php?t=46714 says, "One tip from Rex Rigg is that you don't need any special connector for your airline through the bottle caps. You can just drill the holes smaller than the air line, cut the airline to a point (diagonal cut) then feed it through the hole and pull it further through with pliers. Works very well."

If you have any questions, just message me. I'm also websurfer89@hotmail.com Good luck

Edited by Okiimiru, 21 July 2010 - 11:23 AM.

Susan and Okiimiru's posts are excellent, so I have very little to add. My (limited) experience with kitty litter was less than stellar. Perhaps because it is baked, it might be that fine roots are not penetrating and getting as much contact with the particles as they could. I prefer a soil-based substrate that has a good clay component to it. I don't know what the soils are like in your area, but in many places you will hit a clay layer if you dig down a couple feet. You would be especially likely to encounter this in low lying areas such as wetlands and floodplains. I think a great mix would be to take some of a clayey subsoil and mix with some topsoil. Then top with fine gravel. Vals can be pretty forgiving, though, so kitty litter might be just fine.

Okiimiru seems to be a person after my own heart. A lot of things can be made for your aquarium from simple hardware store items. I think a lot of what is sold specifically for fish tanks is priced much higher than it should be as a simple product of marketing. If you are at all handy, you can really make some great lighting by tinkering with standard electrical supplies.

I've had both CO2 tanks and non-CO2. I prefer the non. CO2 tanks took a lot more fussing than I was willing to put up with. If you are someone who likes to tinker frequently with things, you might love it. I just found it unnecessary. If you are keen to add CO2 and want a simpler method, you can try adding high carbon organic material to the substrate; as it decomposes it will release CO2. I've had great results growing things where the substrate has a lot of fallen leaves buried under it. If I were permited to try it, one thing I've been wanting to experiment with is using buried sugar cubes to increase CO2 levels. But I'd want to set up multiple tanks for a decent comparison, and I don't seem to get away with as much as I used to around the house these days. Anyway, CO2 additions are really unnecessary; don't let a pet store employee talk you into buying a bunch of stuff. You can if you want to, but lots of people grow lovely plants without it.

Why put a layer of sand down first? Couldn't you just go dirt of choice and then cap with sand/gravel?

Andy

CO2 tanks took a lot more fussing than I was willing to put up with. If you are someone who likes to tinker frequently with things, you might love it. I just found it unnecessary.

I admit that I neglected to mention the downsides of CO2 injection in my post. It's not for every tank or every person. I'll expand on that now.

There are two big negatives: 1. Frequent (every 2 weeks) replacement of yeast colony and 2. Possible fish suffocation if you don't control CO2 concentration by bubbling off the excess at night with an air stone or other form of surface tension disruption. Plants only grow during the day, but that fermentor reactor (the yeast) keeps producing CO2 at a constant rate. All night it builds up, and you should test your water in the morning before you first turn on your lights to see what your peak CO2 concentration is. If it's 30 ppm or above, it's distressing your fish. Most fish will suffocate if the CO2 reaches 50 ppm. I'm sorry I neglected to mention that earlier. Some ways to avoid any potential problems is to buy a timer for your airstone/filter/powerhead (or just turn it on before you go to sleep and off again in the morning) or to buy an injector that is rated for a tank 2/3 the size of your aquarium.

When I first started using CO2, I wasn't very good with the yeast/water/sugar ratio and I had some pretty awkward mishaps. I'm sure the constant smell of spilled ethanol-yeast reaction pot water those first few days made my suite mates think I had a home brewery going on. lol. But eventually I found a nice ratio of sugar to yeast online. If you use 1 to 2 tablespoons of yeast and 2 cups of sugar, the 2 Liter produces constant CO2 bubbles for 2 staight weeks or more. But even with a good ratio of yeast to sugar, the CO2 system is admittedly something you do have to replace periodically, forever. That doesn't bother every person, though. It takes about ten minutes per replacement.

CO2 injection requires permanent periodic maintenance, that is true. You are right. But for certain plants it is worth it, because they just don't grow very healthily without extra CO2. Without extra CO2 in the water, plants like Riccia fluitans don't pearl underwater and plants like marimo and flame moss grow only a few centimeters a year. Hairgrass withers without CO2 but flourishes with it.

And really, all plant species benefit from CO2 injection. Is replacing the yeast every two weeks a hassle that is worth your time for your particular aquarium? If you were growing hornwort (one of the fastest growing underwater plants), I'd say don't bother. Actually, it would be a really bad idea to fertilize with CO2 because then the hornwort would grow waaay to fast and would exhaust the nutrients in the tank and then have a die off. I looked it up, and liveaquaria.com does recommend CO2 fertilization for vallisneria americana. But I don't know if they're right or not, and the person in the kitty litter link I posted above grew their kitty litter vallisneria just fine without any CO2 injection at all.

So, in a nutshell, it's up to you. And it's up to how many plants you want growing in the tank. You can't grow highly plant dense tanks without CO2. *nods*

Why put a layer of sand down first? Couldn't you just go dirt of choice and then cap with sand/gravel?

Andy

Disclaimer: I'm no expert. I'm just trying to help. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Rooted plants get a much better fan of roots if they have small particles to grow between. They grow lots of tiny roots instead of one big root. Sand is one such fine particle substrate. It stays looser than soil or clay, which compact over time and are hard for the plant to grow through. Being made of silicon dioxide, though, sand has the downside of lacking nutritional content. Sand has no calcium or iron for the plant to eat. That's why some aquarists spend a looot of money on fluorite substrate. Look at the CEC (cation exchange capacity) article I posted earlier to read downsides to that, though. Fluorite starts out with nutrients but then gets exhausted over time. It never replenishes its minerals from the water because it is so inert. Kitty litter and soil are less inert, so they interact with the water in your aquarium and maintain their nutrients more than fluorite does over time. But kitty litter and soil lose their powers of CEC too if they compact, which is why I recommend keeping the substrate loose with some mixed in gravel or vermiculite.

I personally gravel vacuum my aquarium. (And all the plant keepers in the room gasped in horror and surprise). My hornwort doesn't mind. *evil grin*
(hornwort has no roots at all, so why I maintain a good substrate is unknown). (I think it's because I got the substrate back when I was trying to grow fine feathery cabomba to save my swordtail fry, but then I found hornwort and haven't looked back. It's good stuff.)

I was more interested in why you would put down sand, soil, sand. I understand why sand was good. Previously I have just read to put the dirt layer down on the glass and cap with sand...

I am not sure why the bottom layer should be sand.

Andy

Why put a layer of sand down first? Couldn't you just go dirt of choice and then cap with sand/gravel?

Andy

You can, I go dirt and then sand in 10 gallon tanks. If I have the space, I like to have a deeper substrate without putting too much organic material in.

Also: The Ultimate Native Fish Aquarium

Edit to add: I've never tried kitty litter, I bet it would be great mixed with the topsoil layer.

Since I have sand on top, I don't dig around with the siphon. I try to just get any detritus laying on top of the sand.

Edited by schambers, 21 July 2010 - 04:06 PM.

I ended up using pea gravel because I work at a farm market and got it for free, though after reading this I would have used kitty litter because the tank in the pic someone linked to is about exactly what I want. Will Vals take root in pea gravel or do I need to add something to it? I'm looking to do this probably as simply as I possibly can, so I'd prefer not to mess with Co2 if I don't have to.

Forgot to add that i'm still fighting with myself over the undergravel filter, I like the 2 extra air/bubble columns that come from the undergravel, but if Its gotta go for plants then it goes.

Edited by star5328, 21 July 2010 - 08:13 PM.

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did not mean for those to be 4000x3000, hope nobody has dialup...lol

I've decided to ditch the undergravel filter after reading up some more. I'm not one thats dying to maintenance an undergravel filter constantly, having it clog up and what not, plus i'm reading that people have had ammonium/nitrate spikes with undergravel filter problems. Think I should just use the air pump for a 2nd bubble wand or sponge filter? Anything else I can use it for? After plucking the UGF I'll have 2 free hoses on the air pump.

Will Vals take root in pea gravel or do I need to add something to it? I'm looking to do this probably as simply as I possibly can, so I'd prefer not to mess with Co2 if I don't have to.

No, it will not root well. Here's a quick facts guide to Vallisneria americana: http://www.liveaquar...624&pcatid=1624
Liveaquaria is a great website to use as a plant and fish reference guide. They are in general right about most thingss. For Vallisneria, they say to use "Trace Elements, CO2 Fertilization, Iron, Potassium". Now, that's a lot of fertilizer they're recommending. That tells you that pea gravel alone will not work.

Edited by Okiimiru, 22 July 2010 - 06:08 AM.

No, it will not root well. Here's a quick facts guide to Vallisneria americana: http://www.liveaquar...624&pcatid=1624
Liveaquaria is a great website to use as a plant and fish reference guide. They are in general right about most thingss. For Vallisneria, they say to use "Trace Elements, CO2 Fertilization, Iron, Potassium". Now, that's a lot of fertilizer they're recommending. That tells you that pea gravel alone will not work.

I agree, they will not root well in pea gravel at all. Not much does. But if you use a soil base and top with a thin layer of pea gravel, that should work. Pea gravel alone doesn't work well because it has both a low cation exchange capacity and low surface area for root hairs to attach to. Generally, plants take up nutrients the easiest when the root hairs touch a particle to which nutrients are bound; they then strip off the nutrient.

Keep in mind that when LiveAquaria recommends supplements, they are also trying to sell those same supplements. If you use soil under the gravel, I would not expect you to need anything more for some time. Eventually, as you harvest (remove) plant tissue, some nutrients can get depleted. If that is the case, you will see it in the plants (poor, possibly yellower/less green growth). I have had very good success jamming a tiny piece of a houseplant fertilizer stick into the soil at the base of heavy feeders (such as Vals and Echinodorus) when that happens. If calcium gets low, I have had success by throwing in a few calcium tablets.

Some people do get very fast and thick growth by using supplements and CO2. It's just that I don't look for that. I just look for the tank to look nice, with little maintenance. If the plants grow slower, it is less to trim/thin. Either method works, it just depends on your preference.

Keep in mind that when LiveAquaria recommends supplements, they are also trying to sell those same supplements.

Totally true. They are a business and they want you to buy their stuff. So one has to anticipate that bias and work around it.

I don't necessarily buy the fertilizers they recommend (in Vallisneria's case, Trace Elements, CO2 Fertilization, Iron, Potassium), but I do compare which plants they say need fertilization and which plants don't. That's about the complete list of every plant product they could possibly recommend, so that tells you that the plant won't be able to grow on the nutrients it can pull out of the water column alone. Pea gravel is Silicon Dioxide (AKA glass. No iron, potassium, calcium, nothing but silicon and oxygen). Your tank is very low in plant nutrients when it's just gravel and the tank walls. Even if the gravel was small enough grained for the plant to root in. (AKA sand.) Based upon the fact that liveaquaria says to use fertilizer, that plant won't grow well without nutrient rich substrate. So soil, kitty litter, fluorite, vermiculite, or some source of calcium, nitrogen, potassium and iron have to be available for this plant. I like the recommendation for household plant fertilizer because it thinks out side of the box, but not all of those fertilizers are safe for fish to swim in.

I should mention, no single source is always trustworthy. Sometimes liveaquaria pulls stuff completely out of their behinds [big fat lies]. Like when they say Anubias nana needs substrate fertilizer (http://www.liveaquar...384&pcatid=2384 ) when the people who grow anubias know that you should tie their root to wood and never bury them.
Another example: their hornwort page says that hornwort needs "CO2 Fertilization, High Quality Aquarium Fertilizer" (http://www.liveaquar...948&pcatid=2948 ) In real life, if you had hornwort in a tank with CO2 fertilization, it would grow waaay to fast, suck up all the nutrients out of the tank, and make everything sterile. There would be no nutrients left in the water. And every plant in the tank would starve. Maybe that's why they try to sell you their "high quality aquarium fertilizer" too. But if it were me, and if the person asking for advice was a friend, I'd tell them to save themselves the hassle and do neither. Hornwort grows so fast anyway that you don't need to do anything special at all. Why create one problem and fix it with another? *shrugs* Because they want to sell you stuff.

Edited by Okiimiru, 22 July 2010 - 01:09 PM.

Yea I was thinking along the lines of using a gravel base, then something with nutrients for plants, then another layer of gravel for sure. I was just making sure the gravel wouldn't prohibit healthy plant life.

You could go with a couple inches of topsoil and then cover it with pea gravel. Use enough pea gravel to cover the soil but still allow you to stick some of the val's roots into the soil. Vallisneria will grow just fine. You don't need any CO2 and you won't need any other fertilizers for several years. You'll get good growth, but it will be slower than if you used fertilizers. Growing aquarium plants is a hobby that you can spend as much money as you want to on. You can do anything from growing a few plants in cheap substrate to a Takashi Amano style aquarium.

An alternative is to put some plants in pots, then you could still use the undergravel filter. Fill the pots with topsoil and cover the top with your pea gravel. I'd rearrange them occasionally to avoid dead spots, maybe take them out and gravel vac where they sit with each water change. I haven't done this, but I've heard of people doing it.

Went out to a tiny creek today and caught 2 very small green sunfish on hook and line, also got a used filter cart out of my buddies tank, approximately 4 hours and they're eating bits of worm, hopefully I get my bacteria build up this way.

The Walstad method is the way I roll, and highly recommend. Google it. And Beware the pet store sales pitch! I just gave my pet store an almost full $80 bottle of Excel that they had sold me a while ago. Turns out it melts some plants and is very likely harmful to your fish.

Edited by Elijah, 23 July 2010 - 12:49 AM.