Do aquarium plants need CO2?

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Aquatic & Aquarium Tips

Do Planted Tanks Require CO2?

Didiplis diandre needs moderate lighting to do well in the aquarium. Under low lighting, the leaves will be small, and the stems spacing between leaves will be long, leggy, and sparse looking.

Plants need a reasonable balance of nutrients and light. CO2 is important for plant growth--which is already in the water even if you didn't put it in.

CO2 are dissolved into the water from the atmosphere via fish respiration and from various other microbiological processes that is naturally (about 3-5 parts per million) in an aquarium which is sufficient for plants to grow under low to moderate lighting.

You do not have to add CO2 to grow beautiful aquatic plants. Growth depends on how your aquaria are set up, especially with regard to lighting.

A fast-growing Ceratopteris thalictroides plant (above pic), is a good nutrient sponge.

If your lighting level is high, you are likely to have algae problems if you do not add CO2; but with low to moderate lighting, adding CO2 is not necessary.

Obviously your question will be: "What is a low, moderate or high lighting level?" Healthy Plants Require Balanced Growing Conditions At the moment we don't have precise information of how light is available that plants can use for photosynthesis in an aquarium.

The green part of the light spectrum is reflected by most plants, so it is not of much use for photosynthesis. How much light from the photo-synthetically active region of the spectrum does a light bulb yield? Again this info is not available.

However, aquarium plants are not very picky about the color of light outside of the center of the green region, so almost any broad-spectrum fluorescent or metal halide bulb will do. What matters most is how much light is produced, not what color it is.

Plants are adaptable, so precision is not necessary. Therefore; a rule of thumb that we can use to assess lighting levels: Low lighting is about one to 1/2 watts per gallon--the minimum amount of light you need to provide for an aquatic aquarium garden.

Moderate lighting is about two watts per gallon and high lighting about three or more. The lighting period should be roughly 8 to 10 hours per day. The watts per gallon rule works well for a broad-spectrum of white fluorescent lamps and metal halide bulbs for aquarium of about 10 to 20 gallons of water.

It does not apply for incandescent bulbs because they are inefficient; because they convert 95 to 97 percent of the electrical energy into heat and only 3 to 5 percent into light, therefore, incandescent are not practical for aquatic gardens Fluorescents and metal halide convert about 35 percent of electrical energy into light.

Watts per gallon rule does not apply to very small tanks, because often much of the light shines outside the aquarium. On larger tanks, with the bulbs close to the top of the tank, virtually all of the light shines down into the tank. Therefore, watts per gallon rule of thumb has to be adjusted for very small tanks.

CO2 isn't required, unless you have about 3 or more watts per gallon. More photosynthesis will occur at higher lighting levels that will create algae blooms, unless you add CO2 but only to a point--it gets harder to avoid algae problems as you add more than 2 watts per gallon.

Adding CO2, plant growth will be more robust, even with low or moderate lighting. CO2 can be added easily and cheaply by setting up a yeast fermentation bottle, and feeding a tube from the bottle top into the intake of a power-head pump or canister filter. Besides light and CO2, plants need a variety of other nutrients.

Most stem plants like Hygrophila polysperma, ambulia (Limnophila sessiliflora) and Bacopa monnieri are all fast growers with plenty of light, CO2 and other nutrients but some stem plants, like Lysimachia nummularia, grow relatively slowly.

Favorite aquatic plants are the swords of the genus Echinodorus osiris, they can tolerate temperatures as low as 60 F or 75 F degrees.

How to avoid having algae in your aquarium? Starve your plants and algae will grow. But can one feed the plants and avoid algae growth?

Different kinds of plants to perform differently under a given set of conditions.

There are plants such as Anubias Barteri, (left pic) which grow very slowly even under the best conditions.

Amazon swords Echinodorus bleheri

With high lighting plus CO2 and nutrients, fast growers like Amazon swords (Echinodorus bleheri) can grow at an amazing rate with a lot of light, CO2 and other nutrients, but grow slowly when these things are available in only moderate amounts.

Basically, in an aquarium with low to moderate lighting, the fish food you put in the tank can probably provide enough of the macronutrients. It is a good idea to add trace elements (micronutrients) with a commercially available trace element mix to ensure that at least the minimum amount of the micronutrients and Potassium, nitrate and phosphate are available to the plants.

The amount of macro and micronutrients must fit with the lighting level and amount of CO2 - more lighting and more CO2 means more nutrients to support faster growth.

With low lighting, just about any plants will grow slowly. Anubias do best with low light or by being shaded by other plants and do not grow much faster with extra light, but the leaves, because they grow so slowly and live so long, eventually collect algae.

Every aquarium is different. You might find that one type of plant does well in one of your aquaria but not in another - differences in setup, fish load and maintenance will affect plant performance.

Aquatic & Aquarium Tips

How can I control the algae? My pond water becomes murky and over loaded with algae. My 10 ft X 5 ft pond contains six Koi fishes about 2 ft in length uses pH of about 7.0 rain water.

Freshwater Java fern (Microsorum pteropus) can suffer from Java fern melt if blue-green algae is present due to nutrient deficiencies.

CO2 is only a problem for fishes if you add too much to the water. A good level for plants is about 20 to 30 ppm. CO2 doesn't stress fishes until the level gets to be about 50 ppm.

Water Hardness, black or red algae affect your aquarium. Some sword plants growing from a riverbed that was pure calcium carbonate--yet, the swords were flourishing.

Pruning and Planting. fern, stem or rosette are not trimmed the same way, liverwort Riccia fluitans are trimmed by merely separating a portion of the mass by pulling or snipping.

There is lot of algae build-up in my pond that lasts about six weeks. Would snails help to eliminate this problem? If so, can I use normal wild snails found in most outdoor lakes & ponds.

Using yeast fermentation bottle. You only need a couple of bottles to maintain good CO2 levels in a 92-gallon aquarium--great for growing fresh water aquarium plants and won't hurt your fishes.