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Converting Marine to Planted Freshwater

jmccormack

Seedling
Joined
31 Oct 2011
Messages
3
I'm currently converting my 200 litre marine aquarium to a planted freshwater aquarium. Can i use my Arcadia 3 Metal Halide Pendant (150 watt bulb and 2*18watt actinic tubes)? I plan on creating an Amazonian biotype, any recommendations on CO2 kit, plant etc.
 
Yep you sure can use the halide pendant. I use them on mine. You will need to change the Halide bulb itself if it's above 10000 kelvin as its not suitable for plants, and the blue tubes themselves unless you want to use them as night light. On their own they'll do nothing for plant growth.
The halide bulb can be anything up to about 10000kelvin.
I've a spare sylvania 6000k halide that will fit if you want it.
Co2 wise, if your going pressurised your best and cheapest option would be to buy a Seperate regulator, plenty of these on the sponsors sites, then look for a fire extinguisher or co2 cylinder online and get it filled locally. It's very simple once you've got the bits together and much cheaper than going all out on a full kit.
Plant wise just have a look on google at amazon plants or amazon set ups for inspiration. Also if your going co2 and halide, it will be beneficial to get either an all in one plant food mix or the ei mix from one of the sponsors also.
Hope this helps a little.
Good luck with coming to the green side and welcome to ukaps.

Edited: as per the Clive, I should really have said you may want to change it as you'll have a tank full of blue looking plants lol
 
Alastair said:
...You will need to change the Halide bulb itself if it's above 10000 kelvin as its not suitable for plants and the blue tubes themselves unless you want to use them as night light. On their own they'll do nothing for plant growth....
This is entirely untrue. The kelvin temperature is not relevant with regard to suitability. Please review the following threads for additional details:
Actinic lighting.
actinic lighting vs algae growth

Cheers,
 
A typical amazon tank looks like this:

A nice background, some roots, a couple of swords and some floaters and of course fish.
Forget about discus cause your tank is too small for them when they are fully grown but you can buy some small south american chiclids and a shoal of tetras.

The HQI is welcome as it provides a nice shimmering effect with floaters. You can turn off the tubes cause you have enough light and rise the lamp 50cm or more so you won't have too many algae issues.

Regarding CO2 you can find some good threads here to help you started:
http://ukaps.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=37

Mike
 
Many thanks for all your prompt responses. I'm glad the halide is still suitable as I enjoy the shimmering effect created. My main concern was that it would be too powerful and lead to algea problems. I've along way to go but have most of the hard graft (cleaning) out of the way!
 
I think you are quite right to be conscientious about high lighting & algae issues, there are some folk successfully using MH lighting on the forum but not many!
I use 2 x T5s over my 530mm deep tank & can grow every thing I have tried so far, I guess you can adjust the height & duration of the light but you will need plenty C02 & ferts if you use very bright lighting.
By the way there are loads of X reef keepers around here....
 
Would be out of the question to switch the 2-18 watt actinics and have 2 T8s (Arcadia Freshwater Lamp) and ignore the halide bulb...Try and grow low-light loving plants?
 
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