Substrate and lighting advice?

[Rock]

Hello everybody, my name is Rock am new to the box. Have 4ftL 60gal tank, new to aquariums in general.

Inherited some platies that just finished reproducing I think there are roughly 15 of them now + 8 zebra danios, 7 otocats, 8 glass shrimp and a dwarf gourami.

Ph 7.5
Ammonia 0 ppm
Nitrite 0 ppm
Nitrate ~15 ppm

The tank is currently planted with some Amazon swords, a moss ball, dwarf baby tears, new Zealand micro swords and some brown algae. have some driftwood, petrified wood and a holey piece of limestone in there; the substrate is gravel that came with the tank second hand, and running a magnum 330 filter with ammo-carb.

No CO2 yet dosing with flourish excel and potassium.

Lighting is t5, 2 bulb overhead total to 72watt, 26000K. One bulb is a “aquarium spectrum” 32w bulb the other is an 40w Aqua Glo.

Have read alot about CO2, lighting, and substrate not really sure what to do next, leaning to substrate, then lighting? Seems like I should have used some kind of substrate besides unknown old gravel. Not sure if I need to/want to go down the CO2 injection road yet.

Any advice would be helpfull.

[wesleydnunder]

Right now you have a little more than 1 wpg, which is enough for many plants. As for substrate, well-aged gravel can work, it just doesn't transport nutrients to root-feeding plants well. If you want to go with a more plant-friendly substrate there are many options; aqua soil, fluorite, onyx, eco complete, the list is long and each have their benefits.

For lighting I prefer 6700K color temp lamps. Anything from 5000K to 8800K will work nicely for most plants. On the subject of co2: I'd suggest not worrying about that yet. Figure out how to grow plants, then you can always upgrade to a higher light/co2/fert setup commonly referred to as high-tech.

Some of the plants that will do ok in the current set up are; anubias, java moss, java fern, cryptocoryne, sagittaria, rotala, hygro,and some others. They will be slow growers in your current set up but this will give you time to see what does well for you and what you like.

Mark

[kwc1974]

+1 Good advice for starting out