# Help with small planted tank



## Jonney_boy (Apr 28, 2010)

I'm considering starting a small shrimp tank, either a 10 gal or a 20 gal tall. I'm planning on breeding/keeping cherry shrims and "maybe" some small fish.

Unfortunally this is the first time i've considered keeping small shrimp, and the first time where i've considered setting up a planted tank where my co2 canister can't reach. This is also the first time i'm going to consider trying dyi led lighting (between three to 6 3w cree's).

As for plants, I'm thinking some sort of carpet plants (drawf hairgrass? or HC) combined with a few rocks should do the trick as far as scape is concerned. 

Substrate, i'm considering the new fluval stuff or florabase.


I guess my questions would be as follows.

a) How much lighting would I need for hairgrass and HC to survive. I do know they are "high light" plants but i'm unsure of the calculations for wpg when dealing with led's.

b) since my 20lb cylinder can't reach, a full sized co2 seutp is out of the budget. I guess my question is what is required for this setup. Can I get away from adding carbon to the tank at all? Are shrimps sensitive to metracide? As a final option, I could consider setting up a paintball cylinder (but am unsure as to where to get parts or service or co2 for it).

c) Can you dose a tank EI style with shrimps? or should I be doing EI without the trace?

Thanks in advance.


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## EDGE (Aug 24, 2010)

a. depends on the height of tank and light. I have HC shaded by other plants that grows and I have HC directly exposed to 1.5 wpg HO T5 over 75g. The HC without shading grows a lot faster than the ones shaded. 

b. depend on the speed you want the plants to grow (to fill in the tank). a lot of plants can grow without CO2 but the growth speed will be quite slow for some choice. I never had a problems with shrimp and regular dose of seachem excel. 

c. There is really no point to go EI unless you have a carbon source. Plants without CO2 doesn't grow fast enough to use up a lot of nutrients. Normally, fish/inhabitants provide enough waste for nutrients (namely N and P). Just need to add seachem equilibrium to raise the K and gH and trace nutrients so the plants can use the fish waste. 

If plants are not using the extra nutrients you add to the tank via EI, the nutrients are just accumulating. This become more of a pollution to the water quality than helping the plant grow. Too much love is just as bad as not enough 

Cherry shrimp is quite hardy.


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## tang daddy (Apr 21, 2010)

Florabase is a good choice for plants, if youre going to try the new fluval soil it will definately grow plants although the substrate granules are much larger and can be a problem when trying to plant HC.

a small Co2 tank is not worth it, you could dose metricide and have high light fixture which can grow carpet plants pretty fast. Your best choice of shrimp would be cherry as Edge mentioned, they are cheap and hardy and can also live through the metricide dosing. Other shrimp like Crs would probably die and be less resistant to the metricide.


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## 2wheelsx2 (Apr 21, 2010)

Why won't the 20 lb CO2 tank reach? If you have proper tubing you can run 100's of ft. I think there's a guy on plantedtank.net using a 100 lb CO2 tank and distributing it all over his ohouse. Now, I can understand if you don't want to do that though.


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## bamboo (Apr 28, 2010)

How do you use metricide?
ml per gal?
i'm currently using excel, but it's getting a little pricey.


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## EDGE (Aug 24, 2010)

Here is a good read on CO2 and alternative. There is a dosing guide in there as well

http://www.bcaquaria.com/forum/plants-algae-ferts-ei-co2-lighting-13/basic-guide-carbon-dioxide-81/


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## bamboo (Apr 28, 2010)

Thank you!!!


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