So help me with some serious fresh water planted setups.

Of coiurse I started with a 40g freshwater tropical tank and like d salt. However, now that I know much more about aquariums.... I'm curious about applying some of my salt knowledge to fresh.

What I mean is that I have always liked the natural gravel, planted, tropical fresh aquarium and am curious about doing a large one. Say like 200g.

So.... thinking like salt.... finner gravel to prevent ditritus build up (i know I can vacuum) Powerfull lights... say T5 setup to grow beautiful plants... tons of schooling fish... maybe even 2 MP40s on one end for a river like flow.... and a sump to run media and equipment and top of stuff.

So what about it? any experience? Any setup you know about? Any good fresh water forums to go to for what I'm looking for?

 

2 MP40s

depending on setting you might struggle with some plants as even with a internal fluval 4 cannister I have had some plants that could not cope with the flow and fade pretty quickly due to it

I have some general experience with freshwater
I do use 6 x 39 wat T5s (Im using 2 x 14k, 2 x 10k and 2 x 22k and my plants are now growing into the room, under these )

fine gravel is great, but some plant growth media underneath that gravel really helps with achieving healthier growing plants


the sump for equipment sounds like a good idea and makes the DT less of an eyesore with equipment in it, and then the flow from the return could help with water movement through the tank - again depending on how it was set up, you might find all the flow required in a planted FW tank could be provided by this IMO

Steve

 

The flow from a return pump would be plenty, when I had my 60g planted with injected Co2 and all that fancy stuff I never siphoned the substrate. I had a lot of foreground plants (glossostigma) and never really thought of it. I used flourite in my tank and really liked it, but overall I never siphoned it and it worked well. Also, fertilizers in the soil are only need for certain plants that obtain most of their nutrients through their roots such as amazon swords and crypts.

 

Since you keep a reef tank already. The planted tank should be really easy to get used to. The hardest part is keeping it from looking like a jungle

Check out 2in10's planted tank thread if you haven't seen it already.

 

Awe man!!! you beat me to it.: Thanks for the love.

 

Interesting guys....

So I was not really thinking like a reef amount of flow... but say rock work and plants in back, and a powerhead up front go down the tank. So maybe like a 6 foot tank with a MP40s to reach to the other end. But OK.... point taken, one MP40.

In the planted tank I had I did not have powerheads and I'm sure it would not take much to get plants blowing.

Thanks, Steve... didn't know there was plant media.

I really like little eco systems and really love fresh just because of plants and wood and how natural it looks.

Maybe not a canister filter... maybe some filter socks, some carbon from time to time.... maybe a doser for fertilizer, an ATO.

I'm just saying with what we know about reef tanks... we could have a sweet little fresh tank even though the requirements are different.

My angle is that I could get a 180 say and be happy with fresh for a while and spend a lot less and then in the future if I want get back into salt. Salt is quite expensive and consuming... I guess I just really love water and would like some around.

 

Thanks.. I'll check it out. And ya.. I had really good growth in my tank... I guess... and regular pruning was needed to keep it right. But I had this HUGE sword tail that was my pride and joy.

 

I have a Koralia nano and the flow from my Fluval 405 on my 75. I would say no more than 10X the volume is good. But you could go higher I think.

 

I used a few inches of soil under the gravel for my planted tanks. It reminds me of a DSB now that I think about it. The big difference is lack of fauna in the substrate. I never got much more than nematodes.

Keeping a reef tank does open up allot of new ideas.

 

Nice tank.... and really my point is to provide some movement, and to have some sort of stream for those that chose to can swim in some current. So ya, not trying to get reef flow or certain turn over, just for effect what ever that would be.

I just thought of a MP40 not because of all the mode, but just for the wide diffuse flow and the controllability... turn up or down.... That was my thinking.

I had little Tera schools... but always wondered how cool it would be to have large ones of various types. Specially since lots of fresh water fish are separated by level much more so than marine fish.