HELP newbie lost and need good advice

Do you have any idea what type of plants you want to use? Are you thinking of just using stuff that will grow on rocks?

What are the dimensions of your tank? It would help the forum pick out a light.

Co2 is needed if you have high light and can be helpful with medium to low light tanks as well.

For substrate always go with ada aquasoil - it's worth it.

This is is a decent site with facts about planted tanks. http://www.rexgrigg.com/

If you want to follow my search concerning t5s vs cpf hit the lighting forum and look for my name m-jackson basically what I was told between those two was to go with t5s. I kicked out the mhs because of heat in my place. I just order 3 of the t5ho twin bulb but if you need more (which I don't really think I do) you could go for more expensive 4 tube version. The three I got for a set of 29's was only 60 dollers a piece counting shipping to St Louis. I used to decent before (early 90's with quite a few plants with just a good single bulb but growth was slow. I have used some of the cpf but since I was updating the singles I wanted to know what others currently thought.

Before choosing a night, equipment, substrate, etc, you need to consider what plants you want to grow, and whether you want to go high-tech, low-tech, or somewhere in between. If your goal is a tank lush with mosses, java ferns, and anubias, then what you need in the tank is going to be very different than if you wanted a tight HC carpet and erios centerpieces.

Your rock mount idea sounds like it would do well with javas (windelov, narrow leaf, trident, etc), anubias, etc, since they can be anchored to rocks rather than planted into the substrate. This would also be much cheaper than a tank with Aquasoil and high light.

You first need to test your rocks to make sure they won't affect the carbonate hardness in your tank. A quick search on here should lead you to instructions on how to do this.

PRJCT92EH2 said:

You first need to test your rocks to make sure they won't affect the carbonate hardness in your tank. A quick search on here should lead you to instructions on how to do this.

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i have had these rocks in my tank for years. never had problems with kh before. i have tested it several times over the years.

out of curiosity what was your KH with the rocks?