Home  Articles Aquatic Plants Starting A Planted Aquarium: Part II - The Costs
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Starting A Planted Aquarium: Part II - The Costs |
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Saturday, 01 October 2005 |
 Welcome back to Part II of our “Starting a Planted Aquarium” series! In Part I, we discussed about the possible additional "efforts" required in setting up a planted aquarium, as opposed to a bare tank. If you have not read Part I, I strongly recommend that you do so. You'll have an idea what are the extra dedications required of you to maintain a beautiful planted aquarium.
Because the cost of setting up a planted aquarium varies greatly with your choice of equipments, in Part II of this series, this is what we’ll discuss about. This will prove useful for hobbyists who have budgets (usually due to having a pinchpenny spouse).
(I chose not to include costs on this article itself, as prices fluctuate and change, prices shown here would get outdated in no time. Thus most of the links here will open up in a new window, with the price of the stated product, for sale on an external online store. And if you choose to order from them, they will even send it to your doorstep!)
"If you use separate fertilizers and gravels instead, leaching of fertilizer into the water column can occur whenever we uproot plants, which can tip the balance of your nutrients and cause algae blooms."
Top Gravel and Base Fertilizer Lets begin with the top gravel and the base fertilizer. First, we need to decide if we want to use products like Seachem Flourite or Seachem Flourite Red. These are ore with rich mineral compositions, in other words they are fertilizers that double as gravels. The greatest advantage of these products is that they won’t leach into the water. If you use separate fertilizers and gravels instead, leaching of fertilizer into the water column can occur whenever we uproot plants, which can tip the balance of your nutrients and cause algae blooms. Thus I strongly recommend these products to beginners, since algae attacks can be so disheartening for those new to the hobby.
If you still insist on using separate fertilizers and gravels, do remember to take care when uprooting plants. Be gentle when pulling to reduce the amount of leaching. For base fertilizer, we recommend JBL AquaBasis Plus. It is widely used and does not burn a hole in your pocket. In fact, it is one of the cheapest commercial aquarium base fertilizers here in Singapore. And for top gravel, you can use most of anything that are 1mm to 3mm in diameter.
Filter If your existing filter is anything other than an internal canister filter or an external canister filter, you may want to consider changing it. Reason being the rest of the types of filters all causes water surface disturbances. Water surface disturbances cause your precious carbon dioxide(to be discussed later), that we dissolve into the aquarium, to be driven off into the atmosphere.
For tanks 2ft and smaller, an internal canister filter will suffice, since plants are excellent waste removers. Fluval internal filters are pretty good. And for larger tanks, go for a good external canister filter like the Eheim canister filters. They are known to last really long. And when you consider how much longer they last, compared to their competitors, they aren’t expensive at all.
"...get a timer to control your lighting period. Consistency in lighting period is very important, and it frees you of the duty of switching your lights on and off, every single day."
Lighting Photosynthesis is the process in which plants harness the energy of sunlight to produce food. Since we cannot make use of sunlight in our home or office(not advisable to place tank under sunlight anyway), we have to make use of artificial lightings.
So how strong should your lighting be? Light intensity is measured in watts, and the typical rule is to have 2.5 to 3 watts of lighting per gallon of water. But bear in mind that this is not a strict rule, and not truly accurate. How much light your planted aquarium requires, depends a lot on what plants you keep. And remember, too much lighting without proper fertilization will cause algae outbreak!
Thus I strongly suggest that you do either of the following:
- Decide on what plants to keep, then post on forums to seek advice on suitable wattage.
- Follow the 2.5-3 watt per gallon rule. And if you find yourself ending up with plants that are light-hungry/don't need so much light, change your light tube(s).
Finally, I strongly suggest that you get a timer to control your lighting period. Consistency in lighting period is very important, and it frees you of the duty of switching your lights on and off, every single day. Failure to on your lights for a day or two hurts your plants. And even worse, failure to off your lights for a day and algae says hello to you.
Carbon Dioxide There are 3 options to carbon dioxide(CO2) injection.
If you aim to keep your costs low, go for the natural CO2 option. But you'll have to live with inconsistent CO2 rate and monthly refills. And if your tank is anything larger than a 3ft, you really should go for a pressurized CO2 system instead. The amount of CO2 produced will most likely be insufficient.
Although the starting cost of purchasing a set of pressurized CO2 system is fairly high, the refill cost is surprisingly low. And a single refill can last you many good months, at least 6 months for a 2ft tank on a 3.5-liter cylinder. To make life even easier, purchase a solenoid regulator, instead of a manual regulator. It automates the task of switching on and off your CO2 supply. The reason why automation is important is the same as why lightings should have timers. Solenoid regulators also have the advantage of having truly consistent CO2 rate, as manual regulators require fine-tunings every now and then to maintain its CO2 rate.
Seachem Flourish Excel is a little different. It is actually not CO2. Instead it comes in liquid form and is a form of organic carbon. Seachem Flourish Excel is excellent for smaller tanks, as it does away with the complexity of the above 2 methods of CO2 injection. Many have tried it, including myself, and it does seem to work well. But never ever overdose this product, as reports show that overdosing can easily kill your fishes.
Finally, if you really want to drive costs down to the minimum, learn how to DIY your natural CO2 system.
Liquid Fertilizers Dosing of liquid fertilizers can be rather complicated and impossible to explain in detail within a few sentences. Thus for a beginner, I suggest getting the following and follow their suggested dosage:
Unless you have a very large tank, these should last you for quite some time. And when they run out, you can decide if you want to start making your own mixture from dry fertilizers(KNO3, KH2PO4, K2SO4), which are dirt cheap!
pH and kH Test Kit Of all test kits, these two are probably the most essential ones for planted aquariums. Especially pH test kits, which are useful even for non-planted aquariums.
Why are these two test kits necessary? Because at the time of this writing, the most accurate method of estimating CO2 level in the water, that is accessible by ordinary hobbyists, is by calculating from this two parameters. This method is widely used and is supposedly more accurate than your average CO2 test kits found in fish shops.
Aquarium Pharmaceuticals make pretty good pH test kits and kH test kits. We will discuss in a later part of this series, how we go about doing this calculation.
"...most plants prefer low temperatures."
Fans and Chillers These are optional equipments, especially the costly chillers. Heck, you don’t even need any if you stay in the colder parts of the world. But in Singapore, where it is fairly warm, having fans will certainly help, as most plants prefer low temperatures.
But do bear in mind that fans can only drop temperature by so much. You can’t simply double the amount of fans you use and expect temperature drop to increase two fold. Anything lower, you will need a chiller.
Plants, Driftwoods, Rocks and Fishes Lets not forget these important elements that makes up a planted aquarium. Other than exotic plants, most plants cost only a few bucks. Here are some prices of driftwoods. And rocks cost about the same too.
And for your fishes, do you currently have any? Are they suitable for a planted aquarium? Goldfishes and some very large fishes are examples of fishes NOT suitable for a planted aquarium. If you have any of these, consider keeping them in another tank or giving them up for adoption. Some example of fishes great for planted aquariums are: small schooling fishes like tetras, discus, and angelfishes.
Some of you might feel overwhelmed by the number of choices available. One good direction to follow is to pick your favorite suitable fishes, and plan your purchases by mimicking its natural habitat.
Conclusion With this article, I hope you now have a better idea of how much it would cost you to acquire the equipments needed for a planted aquarium. But the equipments shown here is by no means complete. There are still many more items out there that can be useful to any planted aquarist. Glass magnets, surface skimmers, and CO2 reactors, just to list a few. I really wish to list them all out, but it is impractical as their usages are very specific. Thus in the following articles of this series, I hope to introduce to you some of these equipments along the way.
After you do your calculations for your shopping trip(or even better, order online from aquariumguys.com), continue reading our Starting A Plant Aquarium: Part III - The Actual Setup.
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