June 2009 - Kitchener Waterloo Aquarium Society

More documents

Recommendations

Info

J U N E 2 0 0 9 The PlantED Tank: Is Your LFS Green? A Regular Column by Ed Koerner, KWAS (edkoerner@sympatico.ca). Photos by Ed, Phil & Zenin. Okay, it’s the last issue of Fins & Tales before the summer break and I’m looking for words of wisdom to fill these pages to carry over till the fall. Okay, I’m always looking for some words of wisdom, but I’m stuck with what I have to work with so please take that into account and be kind to me as you read on. I’ve been filling this column with chats on my experiences with various plants. There are some that have not tried real live plants yet, or have and have found that they’ve had better luck trying to grow plastic ones. Don’t give up, because it gets easier on the third, fourth or maybe thirteenth try. But I know that some of you will decide to buy a plant or two over the summer and for those brave folk we are talking about buying plants at your local fish store. that is key. Unless the salesperson just happened to sell you every piece of equipment that you have and remembers you and each of your purchases, they will not know what you have at home. Also, any credible and respected LFS wants to do more than just sell you something once. They want to develop a relationship with you that will keep you coming back to that store over time because you trust the service and advice you receive. Having the proper information will go a long way in establishing a good groundwork for many happy purchases. Doing Your Homework Most LFS will sell various and assorted plants for your aquariums. There are choices to make and there are often several questions to ask yourself before putting your money down and bagging something up. Lets go over some of the first few and see where we end up. This will also help the staff serve you and help you make the best choices for your needs. Remember when you walk into a store, an employee is there to give you service and steer you in the right direction but they can’t do that unless you come in with some basic information One of the first questions to ask yourself is “What kind of lighting do I have?” This will help determine the basic parameters of plants that you can keep right off the bat. Most lighting found today is fluorescent, but there are still incandescent fixtures to be found. The latter are quite limiting to the amount of light that can be used due to the heat produced by the bulbs. Newer compact fluorescent bulbs can be used safely in these screw in fixtures and will offer much more light at a much lower temperature and can be quite effective. If the lighting is fluorescent then you should know the size of the tube as this will often determine the wattage of the bulb and whether it is a single or double tube. Also, what is the width of the tube? Older florescent bulbs were T12 or 1.2 inches in diameter. These are being phased out. Some fixtures handle T8 bulbs but the newer and most efficient bulbs are high output (HO) T5 bulbs. These will give up to 50% more light per bulb than an old T12, so that will also be a big difference to how much light your plants will get. If you have gone out and spent money on metal halides then you likely are more advanced or have switched over from salt water. If that is the case, don’t worry because if you are using MH bulbs you likely have enough of a light 14
J U N E 2 0 0 9 source to grow anything in the way of aquatic plants. So, knowing your light source will now give you some choices of what plants can be grown in your tank. Most plants are considered low, medium or high light. Low light is usually considered anything less than 1.5 watts per gallon (wpg) of total light source compared to the size of your tank. Medium light is between 1.5 and 2.5 wpg and high light would be anything more than 2.5 wpg. Also consider that you will lose some light if you have a glass top over your tank and the deeper the tank the less light will penetrate to the bottom. The amount of time that you have the lights turned on each day will also be a determining factor. the LFS staff might ask to help you in selecting your plants. “What kind of substrate do I have?” This can make a difference. Many people have gravel in their tanks but the size can make a difference when choosing plants. If the gravel is too coarse, fine or shallow rooted plants will have a difficult time establishing themselves and may not survive. If your substrate is too shallow, deep rooted plants will not have enough room to be planted and stay in place. If you want to grow plants at optimum conditions you may even want to change your substrate to some of the newer products such as fluorite or “Eco-Complete”. Water quality can also be a factor. Some plants need soft water to grow properly while others don’t care. Other plants need fertilizers or CO2 added to the tank to flourish. These are things that you may or may not want to invest in so will also determine whether you want to spend money on some varieties of plants. Even the size of your tank can be a factor. If you have a 10 or 15 gallon tank that is 12 inches high, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy a plant that will grow 20 inches tall. The second question to ask is what kind of fish are you keeping? If you have silver dollars for example, the answer is easy – go look at the plastic plant section because silver dollars will eat most plants. If you are keeping large Central or South American cichlids, you may find that they love to tear up and uproot pretty much any plant you get. African cichlids can be tough on some plants as well. Goldfish and koi are also known for uprooting or chewing plants down to nothing. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in trying plants in tank settings that may be doomed from the start, but there is no hard and fast rules that say that rules can’t be broken and experiences can differ. Even silver dollars which are notorious plant eaters can live in a planted tank if you chose the right species of plants. Java fern actually produces a substance within its leaves that makes it unpalatable to fish and can be grown in the same tank with herbivores. The type of fish you have may also steer you to the type of plants you might want as well. If you are keeping livebearers you might want floating plants with bushy leaves to protect new fry. If you are keeping tetras you might want fine, soft leaved plants that will still allow the fish to show off their colour. If you are looking to set up a bio type you may want to match fish and plants from the same geographical region. These are things to consider. You will have been able to whittle down your initial choices a bit but there are a few more questions that you can ask – or that Now, you have some answers to help make your plant purchases much easier. You are primed and ready to go. What comes next? Well, a trip to your LFS is in order. You have likely made many purchases there before and hopefully staff will remember you and you have established a rapport with someone. Hopefully they keep fish and plants themselves. Ask them what they keep to find out a bit of their experience. Look over the selections of plants in the store and discuss what you are looking for and what your needs and limitations are. If you see a plant that you like and you aren’t sure if you want to buy it, take down the name. You can do some research and find out whether it is for you or not. Things To Look For As you are shopping for your plants there are some basic things to look for that could help. Take notice at how long plants have been in the store. This should help tell you if plants are moving or not. A good store should replenish their stock to replace plants and bring in different species. If there is something you 15
Page 1 and 2: J U N E 2 0 0 9 Fins & Tales Servin
Page 3 and 4: J U N E 2 0 0 9 KWAS Mission Statem
Page 5 and 6: J U N E 2 0 0 9 The Minimalist Aqua
Page 7 and 8: J U N E 2 0 0 9 construction as wat
Page 9 and 10: J U N E 2 0 0 9 The weekend closed
Page 11 and 12: J U N E 2 0 0 9 June Tank Draw for
Page 13: J U N E 2 0 0 9 • the Denisoni ba
Page 17 and 18: J U N E 2 0 0 9 found that some par
Page 19 and 20: The newsletters featured in this co
Page 21 and 22: Treasurers’ report read by Brad.
Page 23 and 24: J U N E 2 0 0 9 May Name That Fish

June 2009 - Kitchener Waterloo Aquarium Society

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?