Hello my name is Ryan I am currently 14 and have been keeping fish since I was 7 i love this hobby and it has brought me so much joy. I have kept aqurium plants in the past but i have never been serious about doing an aquascape i have always wanted to but i did not have the finnacial means or knowledge too. I have been working on this project for 4 months now and it is going to be a high tech, swiss alps themed tank. I have narrowed down to these 7 questions that are really holding me back and i would greatly appreciate it if you could spend some time to answer these questions.
So I am using pool filter sand which is inert but underneath it i have bags of aquasoil. I am worried though that there may not be enough nutritents for plants like monte carlo. i am not putting any heavy root feeders like swords or crypts. What do you think i should do?
My substarte is super fine like extremly fine. I am worried that it might restrict the roots of plants such as monte carlo. But this sand is super light and i mean super light i blows very easily but not to the point where like i cant control it. I also have high flow. So there would be a lot of flow and verty light substarte but would plants like monte carlo still be able to grow fine.
I am going to be dosing fertilizers into the water coloumn and will be using the 2 hour aquarist line of products. The 2hr 1 is made for lower tech tanks and the 2hr 3 is made for high tech tanks. when i start and lots of people said to start dosing like this. "start out with 2hr 1, for 1st week of tank being setup with plants do not dose ferts. After 1 week start adding in 1 dose a week of 2hr 1. Then move up to 2 dose a week then 3 dose a week. After that dose the 2hr 1 as you normally would. once the plants start periling and the tank starts to settle in start dosing 2hr 3 as regular dosing on bottle as instructed." But i am worried since it is a new tank and the substarte is inert that my plants may start dieing from nutrient deficiences.
(this is a question about a different tank)I am using denitrification media and my tank is cycled cause I can put in ammonium chloride and the ammonia will spike up to 3 and then 24 hours all ammonia and nitrite and nitrate tests zero. So I know my tank is cycled but it reads zero nitrates which is what I want cause that’s why I’m using denitrification media. But can the plants still grow good with zero nitrate even though I’m dosing fertilizers so the nutrients are good but the nitrates are 0. I know i am dosing nutrients good and there is so much nutrients and aquasoil but nitrate is zero cause of denitrification. Like do plants even need the nitrates to grow good? Do I even need nitrates in a planted tank as long as nutrients are good?
I have had so much problems with diatoms in the past. Everybody says diatoms will go away with time which is usually true but my tank has lots of limestone in it so the phosphates and silicates are decently high. Which phosphates and silicates causes diatoms. So i was wondering if i could use chemical media such as Phosguards or Clearmax or other chemical media that removes phosphates and silicates. Some people say they work amazing in a planted tank and some people say your tank will be destoryed if you use these. So what do you think i should do? could i use these chemical medias in a planted tank? although as a biproduct of removing the phosphate and silicate these chemical medias also remove some nitrates so i guess this question kinda ties in with the above question.
I am using about 60 lbs of seriyu stone in my massive mountain range 30 gallon aqurium styled after the swiss alps. Now i am worried about this amount of stone in a small body of water and it leeching just a rediculous amount of GH, and KH and raising PH. Most people with these kind of tanks say you just have to really keep up with water chnages which is why i will be running an Auto Water Chnager that takes out about a gollon of water daily. Im not using any super diffuclut plants my plants are like monte carlo and hydrocotyl tripartia and anubias and stuff like that. Do you have any expeirce with these types of tanks if so how did it go long term? Any reccomendations or advice or concerns?
Probably the one thing messing with me the most right now is phosphates. I am so confused with them. I know that you need some phosphates in a planted tank. But i am unsure how to introduce phosphates into my tank. Also when introducing phosphurus into a tank through fertilizers does that also introduce phosphates. When you remove phosphate does that also mean your removing phosphorus. Is phosphates even needed? How much phosphates are needed?
Thankyou, Ryan H
