From: steveb@tivoli.UUCP (Steve Benz)
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria,rec.aquaria
Subject: Re: (F) Chemicals, Plants, Fertilizer and Fish
Keywords: tap water
Date: 5 Nov 92 20:17:30 GMT
Reply-To: steveb@tivoli.UUCP (Steve Benz)
Followup-To: alt.aquaria
Organization: Tivoli Systems Inc., Austin, TX

In article <TNDoTB3w165w@spectrx.saigon.com> maddox@spectrx.saigon.com (Otto Maddox) writes:
>...  I have
>a 50 gallon tank very heavily planted and have used nothing but tap
>water and a little amquel from time to time.  I'm not into rare plants
>or anything but I do like the way a planted tank looks so I bought a 
>bunch of plants from my local store, stuck them in the gravel and six
>months later I own a very pretty display...

I'd have to say that you're one of the fortunate ones..  For me, it was
something of a struggle.  I think I've learned some lessons, but I'd like
to hear what experts (or whatever passes for experts :) have to say.

First, plants seem to like a tank with lots of surface area -- both for
the increased aspiration and (more importantly) more light.

Light was and is my number-1 bugaboo.  In my tall, hexagonal tank, I had
to put in a power-glo, and I'm considering getting a two-bulb setup.
But even with that, I'm not sure I'll be successful at growing short
plants.  All the successful plants I've tried are now 16" tall -- well,
except for the Amazon sword which makes up for height with width and
volume..   Short of some serious mowing, I don't see much of a way to
grow short plants.  This is particularly disappointing since I'm a big
fan of ground-cover.

In my other tank, a 20L, plants grow like weeds...  I blame it on the
light, the low fish population, and the high surface area.

One other thing which I can't quite decide is a factor or not is gravel.
I've theorized that fine-grained gravel (such as blasting sand) is better
than pea-sized gravel...  My evidence is largely that the 20L has blasting
sand in it, and the tall hexagonal tank has pea-sized gravel..  The plants
I pull from the small tank almost always have better root systems than
those in the hex tank..  But that could be related to other factors.
In any case, I find the blasting sand slightly easier to work with.

I use plant-tabs religiously.  I've had zero success with liquid fertilizer,
and I'm not especially keen to try them out, since with the tablets I don't
have to bother with taking the carbon out of my filters.  I've also added
some stuff which I can't name...  Amazonian river clay?  You put in about
a cubic inch of this goop every six months to a year, it turns your water
brown for a day, and the plants do well from that day forward.

Then there's a lesson which took a long time to sink in -- Pleco's eat
leaves.  However, I'm not sure what sort of suckerfish doesn't.  In my
smaller tank where the plants are doing well, I have an oteocinclus (sp?)
however since I got him somebody decided to eat some of the small runners
growing from some species of grass whos name escapes me at the moment...
The oteocinclus is my most likely suspect at the moment, tho I also have
festivums, angel fish, and a pair of cory cats in the tank.  Does anybody
out there have any recommendations?

My most pressing concern, and the thing that strikes me as most different
between Otto's experience and mine is that plants bought from stores
are almost always in bad condition...  In fact, they seem to arrive at
the stores in bad condition and then proceed downhill from there.
I make it a policy to be extremely selective and try and buy the day
after the store's shipment arrives.  Possibly my problem is my choice
of fish stores...  Or is there some other secret I'm missing?

					- Steve
steveb@tivoli.com
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria