Planted tank?

jahmic

Reef Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
#21
MartinsReef;173871 said:
Soory it chrashed! That tank is "sick"!!!!!!!!!!!! I should hit you up when I do a planted tank!
Thanks :) Please do feel free to get in touch. I love setting up new tanks. I gave my girlfriend my 10gal QT and tried to get her into the concept of a planted tank...so far she just has some amazon frogbit floating on top, lol. She ripped out a few of the other plants I initially gave her and replaced them with plastic ones. aaarrrgh. I was so close to getting to play with another planted tank, haha.

lpsouth1978;173878 said:
I am ok with it being a lot of work. I just want another tank to challenge me and this seems like the natural progression.

Funny... when I started reefing I thought that was as difficult as it got in the fish keeping world, then I tried my first planted tank thinking, "This will be a walk in the park compared to reefing." Now I am saying that the natural progression is freshwater community -> Saltwater FOWLR -> Reef -> Planted.

Hopefully my experience with reefing has prepared me for the fickle word of planted tanks.
I'd say you're spot on with the progression...I will say though, low tech planted setups are extremely easy. My 35 tall is still running and I just top off every other day, feed the fish, and do a 25% water change and clean the filter every 6 months, lol.

Like I said before though, you've done your research and certainly sound prepared...at least you know what you're getting into. I dove into high tech CO2 systems head first, and would have saved a lot of time and money had I just done it right from the start.

My biggest issue was having a low tech and high tech system simultaneously. They both looked "similar" and one was a headache. During that time I had been researching reefs as well...and was slowly discovering that reefing looked MUCH easier than a CO2 tank. I started asking a few guys on plantedtank.net that got into reefing...and they confirmed it. Once that tank crashed, getting into reefing was a no-brainer.

I know you're not on that site yet...but if you do join you can find some beautiful plants relatively cheap. There are also plenty of guys locally that will hook you up with clippings of plants. Heck, when you get your tank up let me know as I have a nice collection of cryptocorynes that I can probably pull some plantlets from. The Colorado Aquarium Society also does a bi-annual auction that's actually a lot of fun...the next one is in the fall. You can get some GREAT plant packs and whatever else you want for your scape for really cheap, and fill up your tank with a day's worth of shopping. Showing up at the end of the day is the best way to get some deals ;) http://www.coloradoaquarium.org/index.asp?Option1=auction

Definitely post up your build when you get it going!
 
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