Can someone give this a quick lookover and let me know if I've missed anything or gotten anything wrong. I've done EI tanks in the past with great success, but all were broken down early last year due to health issues. Now that I am recovering I want to setup a tank again, but it has to be small and manageable (low maintenence) since I am not 100% yet.

I've setup a 10gal tank. No ferts added yet (plans listed below for you to look over).

Lighting: 28w PC: This is what I had available. Its a little higher than suggestions I've seen. Have a large amount of hornwort to get some emersed growth and shade out the tank a little bit. It looks about right with the hornwort (gut feeling). 12 hours on now, should I reduce to 10?

Substrate: 1 bag flourite and 3/4 lb leonarite. I started with just the flourite as I had it laying around (and habit from my EI tanks which were flourite only). After reading around I see that non-CO2 tanks need more organics in the substrate than I'm used to. I ordered some leonarite online and plan to add 3/4 lb to the substrate. Hoping this will be easy since it is supposed to sink, but since its only a 10gal and fairly new I don't mind a tear down to add it if needed. Shouldn't be hard.

Plants: Tank is planted heavily with "easier" stem plants I've had good success with before in EI tanks. Anacharis, Ludwigia, Cabomba, Wisteria. Also a large portion of hornwort is floating to somewhat shade the lower portions of the tank and (hopefully) help outcompete algae since it is grown emersed and is not co2 limited.

Fish: Currently 1 betta and 3 cories. I have no idea about what kind of eventual fish load to shoot for with this style tank. Examples would be appreciated, although I figured this would have to go by feel. I would rather have added algae eaters first, but there is a poor selection of poor quality fish in the stores I'm able to get to. I figured I'd place a plant order online when I'm ready to phase out a lot of the stem plants used for startup and get some then. Not ideal, I know, but I don't want to add poor quality and/or unsuitable fish.

Ferts: None yet. Plans are 1/16 tsp KNO3, 1/64 tsp KH2PO4, 2.5 mL Flourish added every 2 weeks as a baseline, frequency to be adjusted if it seems to need more. Please double check these numbers for me. This style tank is very new to me. The ferts seem really, really light compared to what I'm used to, but they're supposed to be from what I've read. It just feels weird hehe.

Filter: Just a Fluval 1.

Thanks in advance!

Could someone please at least double check the fert amounts? Thanks.

The fertilizer amounts are consistent with the dosing recommendations for EI, so if you follow that up with regular water changes you should be fine notwithstanding any other factors <grin> ...

Greg

Hi,

It's hard to respond to your query because you don't supply the characteristics of your water, and also, maybe, since you have used EI with great success, some are a bit intimidated.

If you plan to use EI on this tank then it probably doesn't matter whether you overdose the ferts, as long as the plants and the fish are healthy. If you are concerned about nutrient levels, try testing.

Fish load: Within the last month I've set up two experimental 10 gallon tanks, identical except one has fish (15 with a total body length of 15 - 20 inches) and the other does not. The former looks much better, although it is too early to draw any conclusions.

I hope you feel better.

Bill

Bill makes some really good points ...

I have a small 10 gallon tank that is way overstocked with a pure breed wild strain of swordtail (a species holding tank <grin>) because right at the moment I don't have a 55 gallon setup ready to hold them ... these guys are really well fed, and the water is a skanky yellow and I have the most beautiful stand of riccia growing in this tank pearling away and absolutely no sign of algae ...

Two 55 gallon species tanks right next to this one that while are full of plants, you could barely call them planted - both of these tanks have a little bit of algae present if you look really closely deep in the naja grass ...

The only fertilizer these tanks receive is top off water from a well fertilized tank on water change day (they get my water discards from a planted tank <grin>) ...

Greg