Would this work?

[AdAndrews]

Hi guys, im thinking about using my 60cm for a planted tank, pretty low tech, my ideas are these:

Oli Knotts nature soil-need to find something else to use with it, as ive only got about 3l of this...

54litre tank- more like high 40's when displaced.
15w of t6 lighting.
fairly heavy flow
easycarbo 2ml daily
tpn+ 2ml daily
pretty high fish stocking

and see how that goes? im pretty sure it will be ok, im not sure what plants i want to grow in it yet, although i want to stay away from java fern for definate..

what do you think, any improvements to that.
thanks

 

[Dave Spencer]

I don`t see any reason why you couldn`t make it work, although calling it "low tech" is pushing it a bit.

Perhaps you could experiment and see if the fish load can do away with dosing TPN+.

Dave.

 

[AdAndrews]

yea, maybe if i splash out on more Nature soil-or similar, then i would only have to dose easycarbo daily

One thing i was thinking about, if i pick a substrate that is heavier than nature soil(as this is very light) will the top layer work its way to the bottom?

thinking of going with crypts, anubias, p.helferi, e.tennellus...

 

[AdAndrews]

Sorted the substrate, i have some black gravel(fairly corse, but wont matter when the plants are covering) so that wont be small enough to go through the Nature soil

so about 1cm of sand(already in the tank, hopefully harbouring some nice bacteria)
then the nature soil, probably about 2cm all over
then the black gravel ive got as much as i want.

i could do a bit of an open foreground with some xingu sand aswell..


i also have some tropica substrate, enough for a 1cm layer, although last time i used it in my nano it coulded the water really bad every time i did anything, so im unsure whether to use it or not. I could probably do with using it, however, i am probably likely to re-scape within 1-2 years of the tank being scaped first, it may make a right mess?