My Tank: How Little Can I Get Away With?

[goldfish]

I've got a 45-50 litre heavily planted tank. The substrate is just sand, there's a 36 watt bulb on it, which is on for 8 hours a day. I've bought some fertiliser, but haven't put any in yet. Basically I want to know how little I can get away with - I was thinking that maybe the short hours the bulb is on, plus the fact that there's hardly any surface disturbance, and no airstone or anything, might mean that I could get away with not having a CO2 system?

 

[d3tained]

Hi.

You have about 1.3 WPG at the moment and therefor you do not require C02 yes but if you are going to start dozing Fertz you will probally have to start c02 and add more light to keep algi under control.

Is there any problems with your plants at the moment that you want to start using fertz?

 

[goldfish]

No problems with them, apart from one, which is turning sort of white at the top. A man at my LFS was explaining all of the things that plants need, so I got some fertiliser just in case.

So does this mean that I can get away without fertiliser as well? I want my plants to survive, but I'm going on holiday soon, and want to keep as little maintenance as possible for my mum to do. After I get back I plan on doing the whole hi tech thing, but due to cost and a busy near future I won't be able to do it for about 6 months. So really, getting my plants to survive until then is my main aim - then I can devote more time to them.