# Planted tank and adding fish:



## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

The best plan is to plant the tank heavily, an individual stem plant about every square inch of the substrate, right at the beginning of setting up the tank. Then wait a week or so, and add a small number of relatively hardy fish. Many of us add corydorus catfish or ototcinclus catfish as the first few occupants. Wait another week or so and add a few more fish. Do this until you have all of the fish you want in the tank. I have started all of the planted tanks I have had using that method, with no problems yet.


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## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

You can add plants at any time, however, it doesn't have to be before you get fish.

With modern filtration, O2 is not nearly the concern it used to be. Really the only issues can be on CO2-injected tanks at night, and I always recommend anyone injecting CO2 into their tank to run an airstone at night to encourage higher O2 levels and prevent CO2 poisoning.

If you're setting up a low tech tank w/out CO2, then the current from your filter [as long as it's an appropriate size for the tank] should be enough, day or night.


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## wicca27 (May 3, 2009)

part of the prob is cycling the tank and keeping an eye on the ammonia levels. if you use substrate from another tank along with filter media it wont take as long. if you plant really heavily where it looks like a jungle it wont take nearly the time to cycle as it would just letting it sit and run fishless. the down side to that is if you plant the plants in the sub and try to remove them later you can pull every thing up and make a mess in the tank. if you want to use the plants to help get things like hornword java moss and duck weed to help it along and just float it.


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## bnjzusammen (Apr 20, 2010)

Yeah I have already been doing a fishless cycle for about 3 weeks now. I was going to put in fish starting this week, but then realized that I wanted to try a planted tank and move all of my artificial plants back into my empty 10 gallon tank which has also been running on a fishless cycle for about 2 weeks now. I wanted to add the plants over time, but I already have a list of which ones I would like to get. Thank you all for your help


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## Captivate05 (Feb 23, 2010)

I have to recommend hornwort. It's a monster and a nutrient hog. Mine is turning out rather pretty, as well :icon_smil


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## iliketogolf (Feb 7, 2010)

Captivate05 said:


> I have to recommend hornwort. It's a monster and a nutrient hog. Mine is turning out rather pretty, as well :icon_smil


+1 

in addition, I let it grow around my spraybars to hide them. It looks great and I dont see my green spraybars!


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