Newbie Questions

[Kurosakii]

Hey,
I've decided to rid of those plastic plants and want to move onto the real plants, and I have a lot of questions regarding my confusion and queries. The tank is only about 7 gal - would this house any decent looking plants?
Do I need a specific substrate? Am I able to use my normal gravel? I've read something about root tabs =S Do I need that?
I've also read something about Excel of some sort, is that some kind of liquid food for the plants?
Would I need CO2? Haven't read much on this, may need to ask the LFS.
At the moment, it has has no lighting, just natural light. What type of light unit would I need and how many watts do you think?
Overall, I am just trying to achieve a nice looking tank with some real plants, that would actually grow and not turn brown and die out.
Thank you for reading Help appreciated.

 

[aaronnorth]

There are hundreds of plants for any size tank.

nutrient rich substrate would help and it helps incase you miss dosing as the nutriets can provide a bit while you miss the nutrients in the water.

excell is a source of co2, but just the carbon, it helps plants with co2 or no co2 but some plants dislike it like vallis ad ambulia.

CO2 is needed in high light, e.g 2WPG+ (total wattage divided by total us gallons= watts per gallon) although co2 wouldn't do any harm if lower light i used.

for your tank, 24-30watts would be ok and tubes with a kelvin between 5500k - 11 000k will be the best although if enough light is available then dont worry to much.

Read the pinned topic at the top of the page.