control wrote:I'm in the process of setting up my first aquarium and will be using black sand as substrate and be planting a few low light plants. Does anyone have any recommendations for hoods or lights for a 10g aquarium?
Also, when people say they spot clean with a turkey baster, do they seriously mean a real turkey baster? I've heard that gravel vaccuums don't work well with sand?
Don't really have any good light recommendations, but if you have the budjet I think LEDs are the way to go these days (and the prices are coming down as well). Though keep in mind there are bad ones and good ones out there. Like I think one person got halfmoon tank by Tetra and the small LED lamp it came with was just lousy and the tank looked barely light up. Basically no plant would grown in it either.
lol Never heard people using turkey baster to clean up their tank bottom, but why not just sounds kinda slow unless you literally have only one small spot where the poop/dirt collects at. I do use gravel vaccuum/siphon on my sand bottom tank. I think they even make like nano tank versions of siphons these days, so if you feel like normal size one is too big for 10gal then maybe try look for nano one. The key in siphoning a sand bottom tank is that you don't stick the gravel vaccuum in the sand like you do with gravel. Instead you just hover it over the sand so that the surface just stirs up a little bit and all the possible junk gets sucked up. Or like, sure you can stick it into the sand but then you need to watch out that you don't end up sucking up the sand all the way to the hose and into your bucket etc. Sometimes if you feel like the sand might be getting clogged up, simply stir it with a finger or stick or something gently and then go over with gravel vaccuum to suck up any dirt that may have floated up.
LizardsAreLovely wrote:Today I made my biggest leap towards getting some aquatic friends, buying a fish tank! I'm consulting this thread as I'm curious on whether I should get live plants or fake plastic ones. I love the look of live plants but I'm worried that they will either die on me or make the tank a gross green color. So I was wondering if anyone with live plants in their tank could list some pros and cons about them or say if you prefer live or plastic plants. Thanks!
Welcome to the hobby.
What size of tank did you get?
I'm all for live plants all the way if you have suitable setting for them (and fish that won't rip/eat them) and willing to put the possible extra work in keeping them happy. Sometimes you can just stick plants in a tank and they grow great and you don't have any algae issues, but usually some fertilizers are needed and depending on plants you want to keep CO2 and stronger lights. I'm not really sure what you mean by making the tank look gross green, if you mean algae that can happen without plants as well and if you mean the plants over crowd your tank then that's up to you to keep the jungle tamed. lol Sometimes tanks can also look more green due to the color of the lights. Lights have different color spectrums, so some will make the green pop while others bring out the red and blue tones more.
Pros: -Look nicer than plastic (imo)
-Won't harm your fish (hard plastic ones sometimes can)
-Eat up nitrogen compounds, mostly ammonia and nitrate. So in the beginning when your cycle (hope you have read about cycling already) might be still little unstable, they help keeping the water safer for the fish and then after cycle is set they eat up nitrates.
-Take up resources from algae, so well growing plants out compete algae
Cons: -Extra care steps might be needed (fertilizers, trimming the plants occasionally)
-You need to find the right balance with fertilizers to avoid algae (though you can still have algae problems without ferts and live plants so this one kinda goes both ways)
-Depeding on the plants you want you might need to invest in CO2 and good lights (but if you aren't too picky then there's always plants that can work for each tank)
-Sometimes you just have to go through trial and error when picking out plant species (swords for example are said to be really easy to grow, but for the life of me they won't grow in my tank)
So basically as plants are living things you might need to do little research on their care, just like you need to do with fish, to make them thrive or you can go by trial and error. But there are lot of benefits from plants and I do prefer the more natural look for my tank, so I think it's worth the extra efford.
____________
Speaking of plants... So I made my tank go no-fish plants only about a moth ago. For first week or two I think it run well with the fert dosing I calculated. Buuut recently when my mom sent me a pic of one of the trumpet snails sitting on a leaf I noticed there was some algae on the plants. Then when I talked to her and asked her to send me more pics, there's a freaking bunch of hair algae and some other algae I'm not 100% sure what (green-ish, makes leaves look blurry and messy). D: I've never had either of those, so this sucks majorly I've had some green spot algae and black beard algae in the past, and they haven't been that big a problem. But now it looks like a mess in my tank and I can't do anything about it as I'm not home(and won't be for months). ;_; I did get a Nerite snail (well two actually, but the other seemed to have died either on way home or it was dead when I bought it, hard to say) to eat up the green spot I had going on, but I doubt one Nerite and 5 or so tiny trumpets can tackle the current algae situation in 128 liter tank. On good side the plants had grown really well, better than I had expected on some parts. But I'm worried I might end up loosing my Hygrophilas due the algae. Lotus plants were doing okay at least and seemed pretty algae free...
So I told my mom to cut down on the ferts some and add some Easy-Carbo. Crossing my fingers that works as she doesn't know how to othervise care for the tank (like do water changes etc.) and teaching how to do things over phone is really not that easy...
In my experience gravel vacuums work fine with sand because the sand is usually heavy enough to sink back down, but I don’t usually use them on 10 gallons because they kind of make a whirlpool that tosses the fish around, so I use a bucket to scoop water out.
Awesome tank! I really love it! Im so sad for Mr. Glowy ;-;
