BigRed27

I am brand new to the fish tank world, and also more importantly brand new to the planted tank club. Ok I wanted a fish tank for a while and a friend of mine had one he wanted to get rid of so thats how it all started. I never liked plastic plants and so I jumped right into live plants without getting any information first. Well now that my plants are dying I have started reading tons and tons of info.

Any advice or guidance would GREATLY be appreciated.


Let me start off on what I have currently.

40 gal tank
20watt Coralife Nutri Grow Blub
Heater(pleanty powerful enough not a problem so far)
Penguin Bio-Wheel 330
2-2.5 inches of brown aquarium gravel
Various plants (not to concerned if I loose them in the conversion process)
Various fish (1 puffer, 6 neons, 4 chiclids, 1 plecostomus)


What I am planning on getting now that I have learned
(Please correct me if I am making a mistake)

2 bags of Flourite and used as a base with current gravel top
AHS supply two 2x36 watt bulbs with their enclosure

and I will probably need a CO2 system of some sort any recomendations in that area as well. I want a compressed system and I don't want to fuss with the yeast.

Thanks for any suggestions guys

BigRed27

Heres some pictures to show you guys what I have so far

The Whole Tank


The Right Side


The Left Side

Sue

Not enough light. You need a lot more lighting. You've got something like .5 watts per gallon there. Increase it to 1.5 wpg and you could grow a few low light plants. More light, more choices.

Sir_BlackhOle

Yes I would say you need more light also. If you are going to stick to your plan above I would go ahead and do it asap, or at least add some more lighting temporarily untill you are ready to tear it down and start again. You could use DIY co2 in that tank very easily and cheaply. There are lots of good CO2 articles in this forum....try doing a search or look in the DIY forum.

BigRed27

Yeah I am now aware of the light problem. Thats why I wanted to make sure that (AHS supply two 2x36 watt bulbs with their enclosure) was a good choice.

My plan is to have a fairly heavly planted tank and I am still debating on the CO2 DIY or compressed. I really don't want to change later.

Hanzo

Then go compressed It will save you much time and trouble. DIY is OK, but for me the safety of beeing able to control dosing without to much trouble was well worth the bucks for a full system. Also, my 4 pound last for about 6 months, giving me the time to focus on other stuff than mixing yeast and stuff