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Not doing so good

2K views 11 replies 5 participants last post by  Ezekial 
In my opinion it is possible to keep some plants alive with the very low light level you have, but not to keep them healthy and growing even slowly. If you want to keep plants in the tank, but not get into CO2 and regular fertilizing, I suggest you look at the el natural forum for one way to do that. Since you don't want dirt, you can try alternatives such as laterite as a bottom substrate layer, and fertilizer tabs in the substrate. But, you will need about 1.5 watts per gallon of normal fluorescent tubes or PC bulbs with average reflectors, to make that work well. If you use T5 bulbs with their great reflectors, you might do ok with even 1 watt per gallon. But, you are not at all likely to get any plants to actually grow with .5 watts per gallon, no matter what bulbs you use.

There are always people who are exceptions, for reasons I don't know, who manage to have nice tanks with conditions that none of the rest of us can make work at all. If you are really lucky you might be one of them, but the odds are not good.

There is one other way to live with the lower light level: keep all of the plants in the top one third of the tank, so they are closer to the light you do have. You can do that by attaching them to driftwood that raises them that high. Since the light intensity drops at nearly the inverse square of the distance from the bulbs, those plants will effectively see much more light intensity. I haven't tried this technique, but I have measured PAR values for lights on tanks, in the water, and in the air, so I have seen the huge increase in light intensity you gain by doing this.
 
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