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Halides, Big tank, Co2?

DavidC

Member
Joined
19 Sep 2010
Messages
32
Location
North London
Hey,

I recently bought a 350l tank on Ebay which was previously used for Marine and has a halide lamp on top, I wanted to keep a planted tank and thought that too much light wouldn't be a problem but from reading around it seems I was a little wide of the mark.

I don't mind paying for ferts or possibly the liquid CO2 but I'm not really sure about going pressurised. Is there anything I can do to that will make this a possibility?


thanks for reading,

Dave
 
Just mount the halide vey high to start with this will reduce the light intensity .
Also 350ltrs is a fairly large tank you'll go through alot of liquid carbon better to go pressurised on this size tank

Matt
 
You should invest on presurised CO2, it will work out much cheaper and will be much better long run, as the hard part is to maintain the CO2 stable.

Regarding ferts, you will need it if you want to have a planted tank with so much light, otherwise you will have a algae riddle tank.

Read some of the posts on the forum that deal with CO2 and ferts, some of the articles are very very good, and easy to follow.
 
Thanks for the replies guys I figured this was the case. I suppose the same applies to the DIY Bottles they are just not stable so it would be another algae nightmare. I got given a bottle of easycarbo so I will use that until I can raise the funds for a fire extinguisher set up. Is there anything I should worry about with that as well?
Hopefully selling off the Protein skimmer that came with the tank will get me close,

thanks again,

Dave
 
Thanks for the links they were very interesting reads although I'm not really sure I could go for them. The first one needed low lights and the second one seemed quite limiting in what you could keep. I might bite the bullet on the FE CO2 I do like the scarlet badis from the second link though they were very nice.
 
Fair enough.

I like to put those links out there because I started out high tech with a tank of a similar size to yours. I got bored of certain aspects of the high tech setup and eventually just switched everything off and let the sun do the work and have never looked back. If I had just gone low tech to start with I would have saved loads of cash so I just try to let others know the options.

Anyway good luck, hope your tank rocks!
 
I do appreciate it and might end up there pretty soon, the more I read the more it seems that bigger lights=bigger problems, I know if it is done well then it works but having only kept 40 litre low tech tanks before this I might have made a mistake with the halide lamp a little beyond my current skill level. Only time will tell I suppose, at the time of writing I have a giant fish tank next to me with nothing but water in it (and some gravel).

Anyway thanks for your help, I'm sure I will posting some pictures when its full of plants (or algae)
 
I got bored of the weekly water changes. A week comes around very quickly and changing 175 litres is a hassle, (not to mention wasteful). The tank looks so much better without an light above it. Also the fertiliser routine makes it more of a monoculture agribusiness than a ecosystem.
 
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