Plants For South American Tank

[mossonthemoon]

Yes, I have been through all of that as far as fish go. I am sort of clueless about what I want to do right now, but only because I want to attempt to make it a little different than any version of the tank we have had so far. I don't know much as far as plant varieties go because I have always just gotten whatever looks healthiest at the shop, or the sort of pick-n-mix packs you can get on ebay. For some reason learning about plants has been somewhat frustrating. I find that a lot of the information about origin seems to be inaccurate in most places, and I know from out of water plants that they are unpredictable, anyway. I used to be terrible with houseplants and now I am overrun with them. Nothing has changed as far as I can tell, so maybe the same will happen with my aquarium plants!

 

[dbanner]

I understand your frustration when it comes to plants. It's one of those things I just can't get my head around as easily as I'd like. I'm coming to terms with the basic plants that are low maintenance but when people start using scientific names that's it for me lol there are sooo many to learn about but then I suppose I'm in the same boat when it comes to scientific/Latin names of fish. Iv started to recognise a few but I have a very long way to go. We are all here for help, advice and the general well being of our fish, plants and so on so and the way I see it there is always room to learn that bit more

 

[stu40]

I have a rio 400 with the same lighting as yours

Except, sadly it's not.T5,yes,but proportionally you have less light.

To the OP, i'm not saying it can't be done.But just be aware that this may problems.
6 hours would be a good start.

Sorry to drag this thread back up but I finally remembered a question I wanted to ask, now that putting plants in my tank is looking imminent. Would plants be better off in my tank if I tank one of the bulbs out? Would it be safe to do this? I have a slightly unreasonable paranoia when it comes to light switches being on with no bulb in. I am not sure how tank lighting works and whether it would be dangerous to have the empty slot for the bulb... Or whether there would be any point to this for the plants. I am not against getting surface plants as suggested above, but would they still die without CO2 given the high amount of light I have?

Pretty sure both bulbs have to be in for the lighting unit to work.
Surface plants can get all the co2 they want.They are exposed to the air.

 

[mossonthemoon]

The Rio 400 I looked at had 4 bulbs at 54 watts each, so 216 watts total, which is a slightly higher proportion of light to water than I have. Perhaps it depends on when you bought it? But anyway, it's a shame it comes with such high light by default. I will just see what happens then take it from there. I don't want to resort to plastic or no plants.

 

[dbanner]

Your lights should be fine, iv had a rio 180 vision 180 and a vision 260 all with the plants I mentioned and they have all grown well.

2 of my bulbs in the 400 are moonlight blue now, again no problems i dont like how bright it was before. In the vision 180 I had 1 moonlight blue and 1 natural sunlight. Both 54watts. Obviously the rio 400's bulbs are considerably longer at 1200mm compared to the bulb for your tank.

Stu is right, with the juwel light units both bulbs need to be connected and working otherwise it won't work at all

 

[mossonthemoon]

I didn't see the bottom of Stu's reply when I responded. The surface plants think makes complete sense. Haha... Oops! And that is good to know about needing both bulbs. It makes me feel better anyway because I suspect if one would work and I was told it would be safe, I wouldn't believe it.