Easy Plant Tanks

By Doug Valverde

Very High Output (VHO), Metal Halide (MH), Kelvin ratings, pH monitors or controllers, CO2 injection, laterite, substrate heating systems, digital timers, reaction chambers, denitrification units, solenoid valves, needle valves, etc..

What the heck do I have to be a chemical engineer/civic engineer to design a nice well planted tank? The answer simply is NO.

All to often we complicate issues and our lives with an incredible degree of unnecessary sophistication, and plant tanks are no exception. Aquatic plants have certain basic needs, not really much different from the common houseplant that you may have on your coffee table or floor. Main difference is one grows in water, one doesn't. Both still need light, CO2, water, and a variety of chemicals and minerals to thrive and grow. All the gadgets in the world designed to provide these things to aquatic plants, are just that gadgets.

No don't misunderstand me, I'm Mr. Gadget personified. My main tank has VHO and Metal Halide lights. and in another week will also have standard output fluorescent lights. It's got CO2, substrate heating, a large sump and pump, and so on. More wiring then the first supercomputer. At the moment I am working on finishing up computer controls for lights, heat, and CO2. But to me this tank is my gadget tank. Almost every component in it I built myself, stand and canopy included. I'm writing programming to control all the equipment, but none of it because it is necessary, but more because I want to. None of this is necessary. Some just makes life easier, other components on this tank are designed to allow me to grow the widest possible variety of plants. Still none of it is necessary, and if you don't understand the basic concepts behind all of this

equipment it can be downright dangerous. A CO2 tank when filled can easily become part of a missile launching system or convert a healthy tank into a death row gas chamber, substrate heating can become dangerous electroshock therapy, sumps can become an instant carpet washing system, an computer controls when applied improperly or programmed badly can become a recipe for disaster.

Go down to your local river or lake wherever you find a lush natural growth of aquatic plants. Bet a considerable amount of money as hard as you look you won't see a CO2 injection system anywhere. So why is this stuff used? And what do you need to have a lush nicely planted tank with healthy plants?

All the gadgetry is to promote growth in excess of what could be managed without it. Key words being "in excess of". You can get fine healthy growth without it. Okay maybe you won't have the joy of removing 5 gallons of plant matter a week, nor will you be the top seller in the local auction as you try and palm off your excess. So what?

Let's forget all that stuff and get back to basics. Most of us don't grow aquatic plants professionally, we grow them for the beauty they can bring into our homes and business. What can be more peaceful and relaxing then a well planted tank with happy and healthy fish cruising around the plants? Even the color of plants is tranquil and relaxing. Running wiring or plumbing through the walls of your house is not particularly relaxing. (Yes I have done that one too. Lot of fun when you have plaster walls and have to figure out how the heck to repair them.)

First step in creating planted tanks is to carefully consider what you are trying to accomplish. Before the first plant is purchased, before the tank is even bought you need to sit down and consider just what you want and expect. If you want super growth and don't mind all the equipment and time invested in it, well then you have to wait for the next article. If your primary interest is fish and you only want a plant or two as accent or decoration, then in all honesty you would be better off with plastic. If you want a balance between plants and fish, or if you really just like plants and want to emphasis them with fish being primarily for cleanup and accent for the plants then you are in the right place and please read on.

If you are fortunate enough to live in an area with clean rivers that have healthy plant growth take a picnic basket and go down and look at them. See what nature has done with her plants. She is still one of the best artist around. See how big some of the plants grow, and see how they are spaced in their natural environment. Pay particular attention to the relatively few fish per 1000 gallons of water you will see there. Next beg, borrow, or better yet buy a book or two that show planted aquariums and that show plants and give their dimensions. There aren't all that many great books on plants, but for now that is not that important. Mainly you need to have an idea how big the plants grow and what are their requirements. Either of the Ines Scheurmann books by Barron's Press are good for this purpose and inexpensive.

Now that you have a picture of what you would like to do it is time to start turning thoughts into action. First decision is what size tank do you want? I've seen pictures of beautiful tanks as small as one liter, and owned nice looking tanks as small as five gallons. Wanna go bigger, fine, no limit to how big a tank can be, excepting that limit imposed by the pocket book and space to put it. Don't even think you can get away with talking your spouse into letting you wall up that room in your house you don't need and filling it up with water and plants. I promise it won't work no matter how convincing you are. One hint on tank size, a tank with a good deal of width in relation to length makes life much easier and will give you more flexibility. A long narrow tank is much more difficult to plant. For this reason a 55 gallon tank, while a nice fish only tank is not the best choice generally for a planted tank. The larger tanks will need more light and get big enough and you have little choice but to go with some of the more exotic lights.

Once you have got your tank picked out get the measurements, especially length and width and sketch a representation of the tank on a piece of paper. Then with a list of plants you want to work with sketch their location and arrangement on the paper. This will give you a good idea of how much space to allot them, and remember they will grow so give them some room to do so on your sketch.

Now is the time to get the tank and start setting it up. Don't order your plants until you have the tank in place, substrate in, lights ready, and so on. Last thing you want to do is to have to rush the final process. Won't hurt the tank to sit there without water and plants for a week, it will hurt the plants to sit inside a dark box for a week or two or more. Take your time and relax, it will all be worth it in the long run.

Carefully pick out where the tank will be placed. Make sure the tank is in a location that does not receive full direct sunlight. I know plants live quite well outside under full sun, but much as you may try you will be unable to duplicate the environment they live in outside and full sun will give you constant algae and heating problems. Next remember water is about 8 pounds per gallon. It's heavy, add glass, gravel, stand, etc. to this equation you get a lot of weight even for a small tank. Make sure the surface, be it floor or shelf or cabinet has the strength to support a tank and is level. Last thing you want is the sound of cracking floor, shelf, glass, or the rush of water in your living room. It may sound pretty neat on the movies, but trust me you don't want this.

By in large steer clear of the ready to go starter type kits. Lights that come with tanks are almost always inadequate, some of the filtration methods you really don't want, and avoid like the plague any heater that cannot be completely submerged. A heater at a minimum needs to have 2 watts per gallon of water. If there may be a larger differential in water temperature and room temperature 4 or 5 watts per gallon may be more appropriate. For these reasons on planted tanks you are almost always better off buying separate components.

Gotta have a lot of filtration right? Wrong, on planted tanks it generally is not that critical, and overkill can be harmful. First we need to take a look at the three basic types of filtration, chemical, biological, and mechanical. Start with chemical, Granulated Activate Charcoal (GAC) and chemical absorbing resins, are the most common. GAC can remove some of the minerals plants need while also leaching phosphates into the water. The former activity can deprive plants of needed minerals, the latter can be food for disastrous algae. For the most part you are better off without it. Yes it can be used, but why bother? Mechanical filtration is very useful in planted tanks. As any living thing grows bits and pieces of it dies and decay. Result is often a build up of mulm and bits of material floating around in the water. While this can be beneficial it can also be a problem and is unsightly, so mechanical filtration is good. Finally biological filtration. Those of you who have kept fish a lot know how important it is in a fish tank. In a plant tank its often totally unnecessary, and at most only needs to be a supplement. Plants will uptake ammonia/ammonium directly and thus filter out fish waste quite nicely all by themselves. Additionally there surface area allows for colonization of healthy bacteria reducing the need for additional colonization areas.

All these factors to me makes the canister filter the best all round choice for a planted tank, at least at this level. Fill them with mini- bioballs, or lava rock, or gravel for supplemental biological filtration, and then a material for mechanical filtration. They provide current flow which is helpful, are easy to remove and clean when necessary, and can later be used to inject CO2 if you wish to eventually go this route. But if you would rather not get one of these filters, no filters at all, a powerhead with a mechanical prefilter, or just about any other filter, including the undergravel filter will work. Only point in all of the discussion on filters is just to say they really are not that big of deal in a simpler tank one way or the other. If you elect for no filtration at all suggest a powerhead for circulation. It helps plants by keeping water flowing by their leaves so the can absorb nutrients and it helps keep solids suspended in the water where they can be removed by water changes, finally it helps keep the water from getting stagnant.

Now for one of the most critical areas, and one of the main reasons planted tanks fail, lights. Other conditions can be marginal and plants survive, inadequate light on the other hand is a guarantee of a slow lingering death for your plants. There is always a lot of talk about which lights are best, which spectral frequency or peak, and on and on and on. But for the most part you do not really have to concern yourself with all of that. You just need light. Cheap daylight bulbs can grow plants at $0.99 each. What you really want and need is two things. Sufficient light at plant level, and a light that to the human eye produces as natural a light as possible. A light with a yellow cast will make your plants all look sickly even though they may in reality be as healthy and green as can be. A pink light (most terrestrial plant bulbs fall in this category) is not particularly attractive either. Good lights for this, if fluorescent are Colortone, Advantage X, or Ultralume. Go buy a lighting store and get your lights. Tell them you want a CRI of 80+ (100 is considered equivalent to natural sunlight.) and a Kelvin Rating between 4500-5000K (noon light is roughly 5000K, morning and afternoon light around 4300K). As long as you are happy with the appearance of your plants under the light, and as long as there is enough of it, your plants will be happy and so will you. Not saying that all bulbs are created equal in regards to plant healthy, they are not, but at the level we are talking about here, the appearance of the plants is more important then some minor benefit achieved by the "perfect" lamp.

How much light do you need? Again for the purposes of these discussions you don't need superlights. If you plug the lights in and your electric meter starts spinning at four times its normal rate, and the DA comes by and wants to know just why you are using so much electricity, well then I suspect you have too much light. For regular old fashion fluorescent you want about 1.5 watts per gallon up to 2.0 watts per gallon. (In Lumens that is a range of 135 - 180 lumens per gallon.) Less then that will restrict you to only the most low light plants, more then that you will drive the plants so hard you will most likely end up in an area where supplemental CO2 becomes necessary.

Now you have your plants picked out, but still not ordered, lights, filters (if any), tank and location. All that is left is substrate. (Well water too, but that can wait until you have your plants in hand and are ready to plant.) Substrate is also very important. That is what most plants have to live off of. CO2 comes from the water, and some minerals can be absorbed by leaves and some plants have evolved to get most if not all of their nutrients from the water, but for most plants the substrate is extremely important. Like everything else in the artificial world we call an aquarium substrate has to be a compromise. Some plants like to grow in what I would call an organic mud, others grow in cracks in between rocks, others in sand, and others float around on the surface. We as aquarist have to compromise and try and create an environment that will accommodate different species. Easiest and least expensive way I know to do this is to give the plants a little of everything. Therefore I recommend for a simpler planted tank a substrate consisting of gravel, sand, loam, and clay. It is easier to accomplish then it sounds. One important thing though is to make sure the gravel and sand you use are inert. Plants prefer an acidic substrate, few like a highly alkaline soil as it makes minerals less available to them. I live in Florida. If I go down to the hardware store odds are any sand or gravel I get will be limestone. As this is alkaline it makes a poor substrate. Coated aquarium gravel is fine, if sterile. Inert sandblasting sand is a good cheap sand made from quartz. To check the gravel and/or sand place a small amount in a bowl and add vinegar or muriatic (hydrochloric) acid. The latter is dangerous so use carefully and I would not at all recommending this if you have small children around. If there is any reaction at all, no matter how mild, do not use the gravel or sand. For the gravel get one sized at about 3 mm. For sand either real sand, less then one mil, or fine gravel between 1-2 mm. Next wonder down to a garden supply and get a small bag of top soil. This contains clay, sand, and composted organics in roughly equal proportions. Get the smallest bag they have, you won't need much at all. Toss this in a bucket with water and let it stand 24 hours. Anything that floats skim off the top and get rid of. Then poor off the water until you are left with mud. For about each 20 gallons you will use one cup of the mud. Doesn't have to be exact, a little more or a little less will not hurt, but a lot more can hurt, or can be one heck of a mess. Take the gravel and pour it into the bottom of the tank until you have a depth of 2 inches in the front and maybe 2 1/2 inches in the back. Then take the mud you know have and putting about one cup per gallon spread it evenly over the top and then work it into the gravel all the way to the bottom to where it is mixed pretty evenly through this gravel level. Now get you some good quality plant tablets, Tetra, Flourish, Dupla, or something similar that has no, are almost no, nitrogen or phosphates. Work them into this layer to where they are about 1 inch from the bottom following the manufacturers recommendations. After all this is done and smoothed out, then add another inch to inch and a half in the back of fine gravel or sand. Smooth it out and you are ready to go. Put a plate in the tank with a bowl on top of the plate and slowly slowly slowly add water until it comes up to just at or slightly below the top level of substrate.

Now at long last you are ready to get your plants. Several ways to accomplish this. There are excellent mail order sources. If you are real real lucky you might have an aquarium shop in your area that has a good selection of aquatic plants, or finally you can get permits to go collect plants in the wild. If you are indeed lucky and have a shop with good selection and knowledgeable employees I highly recommend at the very least buying some plants from them. Good shops are hard to find and deserve all the support we can give them. But enough for the plug on shops, on to the plants.

Most likely you will end up with plants that will be several different heights. I find it easier to plant small plants first, then the midsize plants, and the larger plants last. For the small plants I fill the tank up only to where there is just a thin layer of water over the substrate. Then I add more water to a depth of 2-5 inches and plant the midsize plants, finally filling the tank up about 1/2 way up to plant the largest plants. Then fill it on up. At this point I do not turn on the filters, if any, and the first day not even the lights. For the first three days I turn on lights only to allow the plants to start to root before they get hit with any current. On about the fourth day if you are using filters or a powerhead turn them on. This is the time for preventive algae measures. Start adding the algae patrol. Lot of possibilities here, ghost shrimp, platties, oto's, and so on. What you need to use depends a lot on what you intend to add later. Don't feed them, force them to find algae to eat. Then sit tight for at least two weeks and three to four is even better before adding any other fish. This allows the plants to take root well so they don't get knocked over. Also allows them to get situated and start uptaking nutrients, including the nitrogen and phosphates fish and feed will create. All of this will help keep your tank for all intents and purposes algae free. Care and patience now can save you a whole lot of headaches later.

Now one last piece of advice. Water changes. Yes you will hear of people that have beautiful planted tanks and never change water. Great and more power to them. But there is almost nothing you can do on a continual basis to help minimize algae and promote plant health as well as fish health as the simple water change. This is one area where there is no such thing as too much too often. A stream may change water thousands of times a day. Best of all worlds would be a tank that is set up to allow for a constant replacement of water on a daily basis. Unfortunately it isn't usually practical. At the least change 25%-50% on a weekly basis. You'll find fish and plants will do better and algae will be minimal. No better prevention for algae build up then this. If you think about it there is not that terribly much work involved in this, few minutes a week. Compare that to the alternative of constantly fighting algae and the few minutes a week becomes time well worth spending.

To sum up all of this, a planted tank does not have to be exotic, does not have to be expensive, and if you want one there is absolutely no reason you cannot have a nice planted tank. Go for it.