Originally Posted by Fishguy10

Hello and welcome to APC. I'm still fairly new, but I'll try to help you out.

1. 2.5wpg should be fine for most plants. Your tank is fairly deep so you will lose some light intensity through the water, but you should still be fine. Personally, I would rather have a little too much light than not enough, so I would keep the lights fairly close to the water.

>> I think it should be enough, Ive done alot of reading over the past week or so. It used to keep Acros alive so Plants should be okay.

2. Getting a CO2 drop checker would probably be a good idea. Bubble counts vary so much based on size of aquarium, water flow, and how much of the CO2 bubbles dissolve in the water. Maybe start at 1 or 2 bubbles per second and see how that goes. Do you have any fish?

>>Nothing yet, plants will go in there first, for a couple of months. Then I'll add the fish. Im thinking around end of November. It will give the plants time to grow, and me to get the water quality right.


3. The plants themselves don't really need flow, but flow is required to circulate nutrients like CO2. If you can see plants gently swaying throughout the tank, your flow should be fine.

>>Does High flow in a tank automatically ,mean Ill run through more CO2?


4. Anubias, Crypts, Valls would probably work. You could try looking through the PlantFinder here to learn more about certain plants.

>>Thanks that one helped alot. Ill get those and some fern moss. I bought rock and Driftwood today. So Hopefully next weekend Ill decorate the tank, then the following weekend, maybe buy the plants. Anyone know of a really good online store, besides aquariumplants.com?


5. Chiclids can be destructive towards plants. You will have to choose plants that can take being uprooted and maybe eaten. It may be a good idea to pick plants that either attach to objects or develop extensive root systems. What pH and other water conditions will you have for the chiclids?

>> I'll be shooting for 8.2,
6. Try the PlantFinder here. You could also use tropica or aquariumplants. Try looking for some plants and then you can ask about them here.

Do you plan on dosing any fertilizer?

Ill add fert weekly or when ever, but not thinking about a dosing pump quite yet... necessary?

Hope this helps, and good luck.


Out of curiosity, what went wrong with your reef tank?

>> Nothing, hadit for 10 years looked great, got bored with it, and wanted a change. I always wanted a huge inwall planted tank, so this is my chance. I highly doubt Ill ever have something larger than a 250g reef ready tank.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by niko

If you are coming from a reef tank backround it will be very important for you to understand what is different about a planted tank:

1. You do not have a protein skimmer any more.
You are about to see how profound is the effect of organics that you cannot see. Your biological filter is now the tool #1 to remove organics. Do not try to remove them by using micron filter pads, frequent water changes, resins etc. You want the system to work for it's own health, not for you to do all the work to maintain it clean. A reef tank is like a dying man hooked up to a life support system. It can not support itself without the little hoses, fluids, and equipment. A planted tank is far from that IF it is setup right.

>>>Got that right, thats one reason for me leaving reefing, way to much work, tho the creatures were awesome, it was very synthetic, i had to do all the work. now i am looking for something that is active yet as natural as i can. I will not be running a canisiter filter or any kind of manufactured filter... its all done by the 150g sump, 6" of sand, bioballs, i left about 20 lbs of life rock in the sump as i changed the water over to fresh.

For your big tank with a sump you should look at the way the big Takashi Amano tank filtration is setup. Basically a huge sump with bioballs AND a lot of flow. There is also a best way to arrange the water flow inside the tank. Just stirring everything up with a huge flow rate like in a reef tank is not the best in a planted tank.

>>>ok... any flow? i have about 1000gph coming out of my iwaki pump is that enough for the whole tank? if not I have enough pumps to do 65x the tank.... (left over reefing stuff)


2. Despite most of the information that you will find about fertilization the best choice is to NOT have readable Nitrate and Phosphate in your water. You can run a planted tank with readable N and P but you are constantly walking a fine line. If anything goes wrong your big tank will turn into an algae ridden cesspool within 2-3 days.

>>> ok, I keep that in mind.

3. The plants must have N and P. This is not a reef tank in which you strip everyting from the water and dose carefully whatever you think the living things need. In a planted tank you are constantly maintaining a dirty system because you have no choice - the plants need to eat something, right. The common misconception is that having some balance of N and P in the water is the right way. But the Japanese do something different - the substrate provides all the nutrients and there is minimal dosing of fertilizers in the water (only as much as the plants can eat in a few hours and always maintain zero nutrients in the water).

>>> Ill have to fertilize, i guess because i still have 4" of expensive sand in there... not an option to change that.

4. In a big tank like that the CO2 needs to be gushing as there is no tomorrow. Especially with a sump whose plumbing causes turbulent water flow in and out of hoses and makes the CO2 fly out of the water. The CO2 doesn't need to be sky high at all times (needs to be off at night). By maintaining a high (30 ppm) CO2 all the time you are severely supressing the biofilter at all times (see Item 1 again).

>>> Silly question, that ill google in a few minutes, what tests are good for testing c02? I wonder if something exists for my apex? Ill come back to that one.

Be aware that most planted tank folk will gladly give you advice but don't really know what they are talking about. Most people's advice comes from their own experience with a few tanks that amount to "this is what worked for me". I am no different and the "big names" in this online community are no different. Above all - use common sense. The above 4 are a good start.

I think that info you gave me is great. thanks. I know the phrase "your mileage may vary".... i totally saw that in reef keeping.

Originally Posted by Fishguy10

For the most part, I think people use drop checkers. Drop checkers rely on equilibrium between the CO2 dissolved in the water and a small chamber of air in the drop checker so they don't necesarily react to increases in CO2 very fast. They may not give perfect readings, but they do provide a ball-park answer. You'll have time to tune in your CO2 before you get fish.

Originally Posted by Fishguy10

Increased water flow doesn't mean that you will go through CO2 faster, just that the CO2 you put in the tank is more evenly distributed and gets to all of the plants. Same with ferts, the water flow helps to distribute them to the plants (if you dose in the water column).

>>> ok, i would have thought the more surface disruption the more the CO2 would have escaped...

I do not know of any CO2 tester/meter that we could use underwater. If you are able to find one it would be interesting to see. For the most part, I think people use drop checkers. Drop checkers rely on equilibrium between the CO2 dissolved in the water and a small chamber of air in the drop checker so they don't necesarily react to increases in CO2 very fast. They may not give perfect readings, but they do provide a ball-park answer. You'll have time to tune in your CO2 before you get fish.

>>>>There is none, at least not made for the apex controller.

Water flow is actually a very important part of any tank. There is a lot of great information over on the filtration sub-forum (thank you niko and mudboots and others who have contributed). You should definetly read through those threads.

>>>Ill read through some of the posts. Thanks, great info!

Originally Posted by K Randall

If you know the KH in your tank, all you need is to check the pH to have a good idea what your CO2 level is. The chart to figure this out is available in many books and on the web. Here is one of the many:

\http://www.gpodio.com/co2_chart.asp

Basically, this is what a drop checker does too... measure the pH at a known KH level.