Beginners luck!?

sonnyjr62 · 09-30-2009, 11:02 PM

Good day all! I just recently recieved a 46 gal. bowed tank from neighbor and came with stand, filter, light, heater. I purchased 5 gal bucket of black iron rich substrate, water pump and air pump. Not sure if I even need the air pump but thought it wouldn't hurt. I put in the substrate and filled the tank with many sigle gallons of distilled water using a piece of cardboard to have ease of water entry and to eliminate much dust and cloudiness. Still have some cloudiness after hours. Water pump is on as well as filter system. No plants yet, but have researched my butt off and know what I will buy. Do I need to wait until the water is completly clear before I introduce plants? And should I test the water for proper balance?

mark razmandi · 10-01-2009, 12:08 AM

distilled water is unnecessary and can actually be worse than tap...just use sink water and you need to treat it with stress coat or some sort of tap water conditioner to remove heavy metals and chlorine. you can plant right away. if you have a plant soil you need to plant ASAP because it will cause an excessive build up in algae which would be very troublesome. what kind of filtration do you have? are you planning on CO2 and what kind of lightning do you have? all this will depend on what kind of plants you can keep

sonnyjr62 · 10-01-2009, 05:30 PM

Thanks for replying so fast Mark! As of the lighting, I'm not sure. It covers the length of the tank and is quite bright. Florecent I believe. I'll have to check on the filtration device. I do know that it has dual flow. Since I already have the distilled water in the tank I guess I still need some type of conditioner? Thanks alot.
Dave

mark razmandi · 10-04-2009, 07:43 PM

yes, condition the water and find out how many watts your lights put out

FreshWater83 · 11-07-2010, 01:19 PM

I think you are fine to plant immediately. I'm pretty sure if you don't, you'll have an algae problem pretty quick! Also, make sure your tank is close to natural light or you have some pretty strong artificial lighting there! Best of luck; let us know how it turns out!

ZeroSystem · 11-08-2010, 01:41 AM

This thread is over a year old, chances are they aren't going to be replying again soon. It does make me wonder what happened though.