Lightly Planted Aquarium ... Newbie Question

[Aedes]

Hi all. I'm fairly new to the whole aquarium/aquatic plants thing.
I've read through most of the beginners resource section in both planted and tropical fish sections and would still like to pose my question as I find between these forums, the lfs and the rest of that vast space we call the "i.n.t.e.r.n.e.t." there is a lot of discrepancies.

I have managed not to keep a number of small fish alive in my daughters 10 gal tank for several months now and have just purchased a 90 gal for my living room. My vision for this tank changes on an hourly basis but for the time being, my wife (who has graciously permitted me to get this far) is saying she would like to see the fish and for the tank to be fairly open whereas i would like to see a lot of plants.

a compromise - we are thinking a number of real plants in the background with a few decorations and open water in the foreground. I would like to use play sand as a substrate and believe there are a number of plants that will do o.k. with this but would like some more opinions. I have read it may be beneficial to lay down a layer of Ecocomplete planted aquarium substrate first and sand over top. Due to the limited number of plants i am worried about having too deep of a substrate due to anaerobics building up.

can i get away with just sand? as this will be a 24" tall aquarium and suggestions for tall lush plants that do well in just sand would be appreciated as well.

Cheers!

 

[ian]

just sand is fine, if you're going to dose the water column with ferts. Personally i would always go with some kind of under-substrate, if using an inert substrate. This means if you forget to dose fertilisers you can always rely on the substrate. Plants would rather take from the column anyway as they use less energy this way.

As for the anaerobics building up, you really don't need to worry about this, this is an old school thinking when dealing with aquariums. The anaerobic gases will gas of and not cause any problems. When these gases come into contact with O2 the become non-toxic.