I decided to start adding plants to my 5 gallon aquarium. I have a java fern and an anubia right now. What other plants do you recommend I put in there? I have a 10 watt fluorescent bulb in there.
Are the plants you have able to grow with that amount of light? Java moss is really easy to grow and looks great growing on wood . My tilapia and pleco prune it down nicely so it doesn't get too long and rangey. Much of the wood in my 100 gallon is completely covered with a beautiful carpet of this stuff. The plants you have are low light requiring plants, and unless you get better lighting you should stick with such. I don't know any other low light requiring plants besides Java moss except for say a different sized anubias. Anubias comes in small and large leaf varieties and I would buy a peice of aquarium wood and tie some of the anubias to it, and you can also tie Java moss to it as well. I like having the anubias bartari(large leaf) in the back tied to wood, and the anubias nana(small leaf) in the mid way in areas either growing on wood or in the gravel. Both will grow in gravel or tied to wood. When you tie these plants on wood they will eventually attatch to the wood with their roots and it looks really cool as the roots grow down around the wood on their way to the gravel.
Thanks! I'm not sure what variety anubias I have now but the leaves are small. I'm not sure if it's because it's just a small plant though. What do you think about dwarf hairgrass in the front instead of java moss? I have read it does pretty well in low light and I also like the way it looks better than java moss.
Hair grass is really nice but needs quite a bit of light. I don't know where you heard that it doesn't, but it'll just end up dying unless you have a better light system. You probably have the anubias nana, the smaller leaf variety. The bartari has leaves up to 4-6 inches long. As for forground plants I don't know of any plants of the low light variety that'll fit this category. Java moss really needs wood to grow on. It'll grow as a free floating clump or it can be weighted down with a rock or something, but it doesn't stay short and root into gravel which is what you want in a forground type of plant. For me I like a bit of bare gravel at the front of my tanks and then about 1/3 to 1/2 the way in I'll have some small anubias. I now have some VHO and PC lights which are good lights for grass and riccia, so I'm going to try to grow some grass of some sort, but I doubt you can grow that with what you have. There are bubs called SHO compact fluorescents that will screw into any incandescent bulb sockets and they would be strong enough for hair grass. I think they sell for less than $10 each and one would be enough for your little tank.
I just looked on petsmart & petco online and I didn't see anything that said SHO. The only small fluorescent lights that I saw is the one that I have. Is it supposed to say SHO? I also did a general search on google for SHO compact fluorescent bulb and all I could find are 105 watt bulbs and the hood says 11 watt max. Sorry for sounding so clueless about it all but this is my first attempt at a planted aquarium. If I don't want to upgrade the hood just yet, is what I have now the best I can have? I don't really want to spend a lot of money on new equipment just yet since I'm just starting the plant thing. Thanks for the help!
Petsmart, Petco, Wallmart, these stores don't have the SHO lights as these stores have very poor selections for aquarium supplies though I just saw a Power Compact fixture at Petco yesterday and that would be good if your tank was 2 feet wide. The problem is that your tank is only a foot wide, I'd guess, and these lights are about 2 feet wide. The SHO bulbs would be perfect but you probably would have to order them unless you can find an aquarium only store, and then they may not have them either. The SHO compact fluorescents need a regular screw in type receptacle, like the bulb receptacle a 75 watt or 100 watt regular light bulb screws into and they look like the new energy efficient bulbs everybody's talking about these days that replaces the regular incandescent bulbs. Your tank has the "tube" kind of fitting and SHO bulbs wont work in it. Hair grass is very cool but takes much more light than what you have. I'll try to find a link for those SHO bulbs but give me a day or so as I'm expecting guests. These bulbs come, for a few more dollars, with a reflector that you could place on top of your small tank and it might fit OK. PS Just Google SHO compact aquarium light and you'll find them easy. I'm not good at making links easy. They're cheap and make sure you get the aluminum reflector that will make it easy to place on top of your tank. Good luck. With this you can grow most anything you want. By the way, tell what kind of fish you have. Plants need some kind of fertiliser, especially hair grass and higher light requiring plants. The fish may supply enough of their own fertiliser, so tell me what you have.
Sorry. These SHO bulbs with reflector are $45.00. Get the "daylight, not the blue one. www.americanaquariumproducts.com/PowerCompact.html
You may think this is ugly to have on top of your tank, but the plants will be very happy!
Well, right now I'm trying to get rid of ich so I lost one of my dwarf platies and my betta isn't looking good but maybe he'll pull through. But once I get through this and start back trying to upgrade the whole plant situation, I'll have a betta & 2 dwarf platies. Or if I do lose the betta, I may have 3 dwarf platies and no betta. Would I be able to put this on the outside of the aquarium? The reason I'm asking that is because I have an eclipse hood with the filteration in the hood so I can't really put it over the tank without getting new filteration which isn't an option right now.
The watts per gallon rule is variable. I 'm not a lighting expert and I've only recently been reading up on lights. If it's the SHO bulb you're referring to I was suggesting it for growing high light requiring plants like hair grass and Ricca. You may want to go on www.plantgeek.com forums if you want more expert opinions on growing plants. Are you treating ick with that blue medication? Remember to keep treating 3-4 days after you stop seeing spots on your fish. This is because the med cannot kill the ick when it is in it's "spots" form. It kills ick when it's in the free swimming part of it's life cycle. It helps to raise the water temperature too. Raising it to 85 - 90 degrees speeds up the ick life cycle thus speeding the time needed to kill it.
It seems like every site has different information, but it seems the Black Neon Tetra can handle a varied pH provided it has become accustomed to it. My local city water pH is 8.0 or more, so that's what they're in in the store. My pH is around 7.6. The Harlequin Rasbora has also caught my eye, maybe I should go that route. It's tough to know what to choose.
I'm going to buy some cardinal or neon teras, maybe 30 little ones after the approx135 tilapia and mousquito fish fry grow up and I remove them. The M fish only get about 1.5-2 inches long but the tilapia will get over a foot. I like to watch fish school and right now and the tilapia are about about 3/4 inch long each, but they stick together and the mosquito fish keep to themselves too. I figured I'd enjoy these babies till they grow up and the plants fill in nicely, and then they will become gar food.
Then I'll get about 30-40 tetras and some small loaches. I'm not sure what a Harliquin Rasbora is.
harlequin rasboras are very neat looking tetra they have a harp shaped marking on their midsection and the outline of this is usually a neon gold color and the inner part of the harp shape is black, they are really neat and love to school together as any typical small tetra. they will go fine with most any other tetra, except the larger more agressive variety such as congo tetra...
I recently purchased an ''upgrade'' florescent bulb for my 5gallon. It came equipped with a 15w incandescent, and I now have a 10w flourescent equal to about 50-60w incandescent light. Its a coralife 50/50 10,000k/actinic bulb. I've had java moss, java fern, and anubias in it for several months now, with no noticeable difference in growth since the lighting upgrade, however algae seems to be really taking off which keeps my oto really busy. lol
Soon (next couple of weeks) I'll be testing this setup by adding Dwarf Baby Tears as a foreground plant. As far as I know they're a HIGH light plant. I'll be happy to post my results. 2 wpg by the lighting ''standards'' is inadequate, but we'll see.
The Amazon Sword in my 16gal has almost doubled in size, and started a runner with a new plant in about a months time @ >1wpg
I'd like to know how Dwarf Baby tears grows without added co2. I just bought some Microsword a few days ago and it still seems very green, though it's too soon to know if it'll do well, and I'll get some Dwarf Hair Grass today. I'm using a double 65 watt VHO florescent and no co2 which is kind oflike what you're doing. I'm used to growing Java Moss, Java Fern, and Anubias like you so Lets hope we can also do the high light plants. Nobobo can at www.nobobo.com so we should be able to as well!
