# Need Advice



## Ford101 (Jun 11, 2010)

Okay so i am tired at looking at my "okay" aquarium with beautiful fish, its time to step things up a bit.

I have:

- 29 gallon freshwater tank
-100w heater
- Aqueon 30 power filter
- T5HO Dual Bulb, 48 watts total
- Fluorite / Black Gravel mixture substrate
- A newly added bubble wall
- Java moss and a moss ball
- Large driftwood
- An unknown tall aquatic plant
- Trumpet snails
- 2 Angel fish
- Ghost shrimp
- A few Mollies and neons
- Ph is about 6.0- 7.0 tops
- Weekly 20-25% water change w/ vaccuming
- Weekly Treatment of Stress Zyme

I have gone through so many plants but they just dont grow well. i upgraded the lighting and it helped very little. 48watts / 29 gallons = 1.65 wpg. so a low light tank i would assume. i have ferts in the substrate too. I have no knowledge of CO2 but would that help? I am also trying to battle a moderate case of BBA. which i am holding steady but certainly not winning. I manually remove it every week as much as possible and recently added a bubble wall for more circulation. I am thinking about getting an SAE. Also i think my tank is a little bare, what are some good hardy low light plants for the back wall? thanks for any help!

- Andrew


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

I have a similar setup...29g, 48w T5HO. Tank is very bright and I just got the light Monday so I haven't messed with it much. My light sits directly on my glass and I don't use the legs that came with it (fishneedit.com light).

If I were you I'd get some Florish Excel. It will take care of BBA. I put in about a half a cap a day. I believe your lighting may be firmly in the medium range. WPG doesn't really apply well to smaller tanks and certainly doesn't apply to a T5HO fixture. If your plants were struggling before you added the better light, improvement in those plants will take a little while to show. Plants will show a negative much faster than they will a positive. In other words, they will look bad pretty quick but getting them back to what they were may take a little more time.

The higher the light you put on your tank, the higher the demand for nutrients. This would apply to CO2 also. I would think that you'd probably be suited for a DIY setup on your tank if you wanted to go that route. I'm getting ready to go with a Paintball system setup on mine. You can get everything you need for about $130 and a place like Dick's will refill a paintball tank for $4. They last about 2months depending on how much you are putting out. Not a necessity of course. You can do well without CO2 also, but with the higher light you have to find the balance to keep algae at bay.


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## Ford101 (Jun 11, 2010)

i was thinking of doing a homemade recipe and splicing a co2 output line into my bubble wall? would that work you think?


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

If you do CO2, it will not work well with a bubble wall. Bubblers are used to break down the concentration of CO2 in water. They create surface agitation and that causes the CO2 gas to leave your water. People use them when their CO2 gets too high.


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## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

Bubble walls are too porous and require too much air volume to be effective in any way with CO2. Yeast-fermentation DIY CO2 kits put out a tiny trickle of bubbles, and require something with very fine porosity like a ceramic plate diffuser to be effective at all.

I second the Flourish Excel. I think your light level is fine (I use a 48W T5HO over a 29 gallon tall tank), what you lack for stellar plant growth are fertz and CO2. The imbalance of too much light and not enough CO2 and nutrients is probably what has given rise to your BBS (though I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, I'm assuming some kind of algae).

So some things to consider are Flourish Excel for sure, possibly some basic dry chemical fertilizers, and possibly a DIY yeast fermentation or compressed paintball CO2 setup. If you have deep pockets for your expansion, seriously consider a legit pressurized CO2 system - you'll be glad you spent the money in years when the other systems are breaking down or just not cutting it.


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## eaglesfan3711 (Nov 16, 2008)

One thing that would go very well in that tank is java fern. It attaches to driftwood, has nice color, and it grows well in low light. Consider trying some of that.


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## prostock442 (Feb 5, 2011)

I don't think you're going to need the CO2. I have a 30g tank, above my tank is a chrome 4' shop lamp with 2 T-5 48" bulbs. I have low, medium & high light plants in my tank and they're all doing fine. I used my Osmocote Plus Fertilizer Capsules to feed the plants, they are high in Nutrients and all the good stuff. Let me know if you'd like to purchase any capsules, I sell them as well as use them. Good luck. Brian


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## Ford101 (Jun 11, 2010)

i do believe i will need some sort of ferts next. i spent the day today building a dyi co2 unit. it will be installed tomorrow as the silicone seals need to dry overnight. its a one liter reactor with a water filter and check valve. i will send it to the tank with a small air stone at the end. i plan on placing the airstone right under the filer intake so it gets sucked up. i figured thats the easiest way to incorporate the co2 into the tank. any thoughts?


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## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

Ford101 said:


> i do believe i will need some sort of ferts next. i spent the day today building a dyi co2 unit. it will be installed tomorrow as the silicone seals need to dry overnight. its a one liter reactor with a water filter and check valve. i will send it to the tank with a small air stone at the end. i plan on placing the airstone right under the filer intake so it gets sucked up. i figured thats the easiest way to incorporate the co2 into the tank. any thoughts?


Sounds good to me. Just make sure you don't overdose on yeast and sugar, because you REALLY don't want that stuff backing up the tube into your tank.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

[email protected] said:


> Just make sure you don't overdose on yeast and sugar, because you REALLY don't want that stuff backing up the tube into your tank.


You speak as if you have experience with that, lol.

I'd be interested to hear how it works for you. I know people do it, I just never liked the idea of sucking air bubbles into the intake of a HOB filter. It seems to me that you would loose some of it to the atmosphere very easy as it crosses over the overflow just before it hits your water. You'll want to bring up the water level so that water is not crashing into your tank so much to reduce gassing off. 

If it were me, I'd get a cheap power head (low output) and just stick the CO2 line into the air inlet on the powerhead. This would help disperse the CO2 throughout your tank better also. Just saying what I would do. I have a couple of maxi-jet powerheads laying around.


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