Live Plants in your Aquarium
Your goal may be to simply add a few live plants or it may be to create a lush garden such as my 75 gallon tank. With the information from this website you will have the knowledge to do either.
Since this is a basic information article we should first answer the question of why you should choose live over artificial plants. Simply put, live plants enhance water quality and in doing so provide a healthy and more stable environment for our fish. In addition live plants provide a food source for many fish. Lastly, the varieties, colors, and constant changing of the aquascape with live plants can't be achieved with static artificial plants. Few things of this hobby can rival the beauty of a healthy planted tank.
Now that you've decided you want the benefits and natural beauty of live plants, the next step is to determine to what degree you wish to be involved. The word involved in this sense means how much time, money, and work do you wish to spend on your new project both to begin with and to maintain. There are two major types of planted tanks. Each can produce a beautiful planted tank that will provide a healthy environment for your fish and provide an incredible sense of accomplishment and pride for the aquarist.
First let's describe a few terms that both styles have in common and become familiar with the issues that make plants grow and thrive.
Lighting - Obviously plants need light to grow, but the type and intensity of the light needs to be understood in order to have any success with plants. Screw in incandescent bulb lighting such as found in many 10G aquarium hoods are not able to properly keep plants healthy. Incandescent lighting waste 2/3's of it's energy in the form of heat instead of light making incandescent lighting a really poor choice for planted tanks. Fluorescent lighting is a better choice. Linear fluorescent tubes that run the length of the aquarium are the best low cost lighting system for the planted tank. We use a very generalized "rule of thumb" for describing lighting intensity for planted tanks. That term is "Watts per Gallon", or wpg. When you see it mentioned that you need 1.5wpg, that number refers to having 1.5wpg of normal output linear fluorescent lighting. For example, on a 20G tank this would mean 30W of light. There are many factors that determine lighting systems efficiency but that is beyond the scope of this beginning article. As your experience increases you will no doubt wish to look at the ton's of information specific to the variables that effect lighting efficiencies.
For more information.Substrate - This is the material that is in the bottom of the tank that serves as a place where the plants roots can anchor themselves and draw nutrients. Substrate materials include sand, soil, gravel, kitty litter, laterite, peat, and plant mulm. Good substrate can be a combination of two or more of any of the above mentioned materials or a commercially available complete ready to use substrate like SeaChem's Flourite and Onyx Sand.
Nutrients - These include all the nutrients except carbon. Plants needs nourishment in order to grow and remain healthy. The great thing about live plants is the nutrients they need are produced in rather large quantities by fish waste. Plants need nitrogen, which is produced by the fish in the form of ammonia and plants also use nitrates, another byproduct of the nitrification process. The other nutrients that plants require, potassium, phosphorus, iron and several other trace elements are usually available in some degree either from the water itself or from fish food and fish produced waste byproducts. In heavily planted tanks the plants may remove all of a specific nutrient from the tank and create a need to add that nutrient back. This is fertilizing and shouldn't be done indiscriminately or algae problems will develop.
For more information.CO2 - Plants by dry weight are over 40% carbon. For this reason alone it should be obvious that plants require a lot of carbon to grow and remain healthy. Plants can easily receive carbon from CO2, carbon dioxide. CO2 is dissolved in the water and to a small extent is released from fish through respiration. Making sure plants have an ample supply of CO2 is critical to your success with live plants. CO2 needs are largely based on plant species, plant mass, plant growth rate, and lighting levels. Providing proper CO2 will be more clearly defined in each type of planted tank.
For more information.Now that we are familiar with the basic terms of planted tanks, let's describe the basic setup for each of the two major types of planted tanks. First will describe the low light low maintenance tank, followed by the more ambitious high light CO2 injected high maintenance tank.
For quick answers to your questions about planted tanks or fish keeping in general please check out my links page for my list of helpful message boards.
