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new to all this, longwinded introduction
Hello,
My name is Bob. I've had a goldfish tank for about a year now, and ready to
move up a level with my aquarium. I have lots of questions. I'm an engineer,
so I obsess over details. I'll try to limit my posts to just a couple of Q's
at a time.
My current set-up is an unheated 20H with a 15W fluorescent hood, 7 g'fish and
a plecostamus. I know that's too many fish for the tank, but they are healthy
and seem happy. It has a sand substrate and is planted with elodea and
hornwort, which grow a little faster the the fish eat them. I also planted
some common nutgrass a week ago, but don't know what it's gonna do yet. I
have a large "dirt magnet" sponge filter and an AquaTech 5-15 power filter
with just bridal netting stuffed in it to filter out large solids and keep the
water moving. I don't have room for a larger tank.
I just added supplimental CO2 today with a yeast bottle tee'd into the airline
for the sponge filter. With the high bioload, maybe I'm already getting
enough CO2 from fish respiration. The water here is quite hard, and the pH was
off the scale of the indicator paper, so greater than 7.6.
I'm trying to design a hood using a single 40W or 50W compact fluorescent
lamp. When the stem plants start trying to take over, I'd like to replace
most of them with somethings more interesting and exotic -- that will coexist
with goldfish in an unheated tank.
Any comments or suggestions so far?
Will the pleco be happy in a tank with such a high light level as I'll
eventually have (the existing 15W aqua-glo, plus a 40W high efficiency lamp
with a double-parabola reflector)? Total may be several thousand lumens per
square foot (lux) at the surface.
Will something like java fern grow in the low light I have now?
Thanks for listening, and for the advice.
best regards,
bob