What will I need

[kayliwolf76]

I want a 40-75 gallon tank. I know i need filter, heater, and other assorted items. My big question is I want plants what is this about CO2 and pumps and all that don't understand at all. Have a ten and is heavily planted do i need to worry...

 

[Whiskers]

i don't have real plants but if i did i would look in the planted aquarium threads and read the stickys and also check the DIY (do it yourself) threads. they should be really helpful. if you are still confused at that point, i would ask specific questions in those threads.

 

[lauraj]

Basically, the higher the wattage you have for your plants, the more you need to add CO2. Whiskers is right, you should read up on the subject though....there's a lot of related aricles out there that will help to understand it all.

If you want a low tech planted tank and would rather not deal with the whole pressurized CO2, I'd suggest go with plants that do well with lower wattage lights.

When I upgraded my tanks lights to 65 watts (>3 watts per gallon) I didn't realize this meant I also needed to add CO2. I've gotten by with the Hagen manual CO2 kit, but my plants would probably be doing better if I went the pressurized CO2 route.

 

[brian1973]

There are other factors involved as well, read the stickies as suggested. Look for posts by Avalon and ishar they are the 2 gurus of planted tanks.

I personally went a different route with my planted 90G native tank and have high light and NO CO2. I use a loose variation of the walstad method.

 

[lauraj]

Interesting......I had never heard of the Walstad method and just read an article about it.

 

[brian1973]

Mine is a very loose version.since I am heavily stocked and use filtration.