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i have a 55 gallon with mbuna right now with 2 24in light strips. I have a rena xp3 and a 250w heater. my tap water is 8.2ish. I LOVE PLECOS. I was wondering if i could change the tank into somethiing planted with blue rams or apistos. I have recently gotten lots of calico longfin plecos and driftwood and i dont want the fish to weat the fins so they have to be friendly and peaceful. I dont want my fish to die everyother day like with the agression in mbuna. I plan to have a rock backgroup with driftwood feauture and lots of java moss. Do i have to have co2 stuff? What do u suggest. btw this has to work for longfin bn plecos, goldy nuggets and some more. Thanks

You certainly don't need CO2 if you're just going to have java moss etc. CO2 is really only of benefit in heavily planted tanks with a fair amount of lighting.

ok so what kind of plants can i use with no co2?

You can have a beautiful planted tank without CO2, but growth will be slower. The current trend seems to be to use CO2 for accelerated growth as these days everyone wants instant results.

However I think that perhaps the main limit to plant growth in your tank may be the plecos

My semi-planted catfish tank has Anubias, Java fern, Java moss and dwarf water lillies. These survive quite well, but I did have to remove a pair of Bristlenose who would munch on the floating lilly leaves if I left it too long without giving them fresh vegies. The P. maccus and H. inspectors don't bother the plants at all.

I use no CO2 and add no fertilizer, other than fish food which ends up as nitrate (plants prefer ammonia but the filter consumes it before the plants can). Certainly not ideal for the plants, but the tank still looks nice and green.

If you want to grow plants like swords without going high tech and using CO2 and heaps of lighting, then give them a good substrate and feed them with root tablets. They won't grow super fast, but if you can find plants that like your water conditions then they should do reasonably well - providng the fish don't eat them of course!

Vallisnaria tends to do well in alkaline water so that might be a good one to start with.

ok so i can do java moss, java fern, anubias. I will have bn in there for sure so no water lilies. i dont care about plant growth as of now i only care that it looks inice and they live

For plants to work well, you'll be better of keeping the temps a little bit lower, so no mid-eighties (upper twenties) on the temperature.

I've not got very bright lights in my tank, and unfortunately too high a temperature at the moment, but my Amazon swords grow quite nicely, as do anubias (although the rosy barbs tend to nibble the new shoots every now and again - it's a good idea to not keep any barbs in planted tanks, as they tend to chew on plants...)

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Mats

ok so what temp should i do? what kind of bulbs??

redzebra,
This is a 75 gallon tank without CO2.:

I use the tablet fertilizer once a month. I use the iron and liquid fert.once a month, too. The water in this tank is on the soft side. There's some kind of Echinodorus sp.(sword plant) near the front and one in the back. There's Vallisneria americana, Ludwigia repens, Java fern and Bacopa caroliniana. There's the obligitory duckweed in there, too. I try to keep it to a minimum. I have some Hygrophila stricta in another tank. It does okay, but not spectacular(it's in soft water). The duckweed is getting out of control again.
Amanda

so what ph u have?

That's a lovely tank you have there Amanda, ample proof you don't need to go high tech to grow healthy plants.

More relevant to the plants than pH is what the kH and gH is. If the water is soft, do you add anything to buffer it such as shell grit?

Thanks! The pH is 6.8 for the better part of the week. The closer it gets to water change time, it edges up to 7.0. I use about 2 gallons of tap water per 40 gallons of RO water(enough to get the microSeimens from 8 to 120). I try to keep the microSeimens in the 75 gallon around 200(the 20 gal.Chaetostoma tank is 80 microSeimens). The water is quite hard out of the tap. There are a lot of people with "African" tanks in my area.
Amanda

i think i will try planted with africans

That'd be quite a feat if you pull it off.

hope you use Pygmy's or perhaps Kalahari Bushmen and no Masai or Zulu warriors or else you'd need one heck of a tank

ok i wasnt plaing on using catfish

said the man asking for advice on the biggest catfishforum of the planet.

erm

sorry to spoil the beans on you, mate; but those calico longfin plecs you bought fall right in the catfishy kinda fish