i know essentially nothing about planted tanks, so i'm sorry that these questions are ridiculous. anyway, i'm considering planting my betta's 5.5 gal, and am not sure if you can just go out and buy plants and stick them in or what, so anyway...

1. what kind of substrate is necessary? can you just have them in regular gravel, or do you need special soil/fertilizers, etc?

2. how do you go about cleaning a planted tank...? take the plants out every time you use a gravel vac like you would fake plants? just vacuum around them?

3. is CO2 injection stuff necessary? i can't imagine 1 little betta would create enough CO2, unless perhaps i only got 2 plants?

4. how much light would plants need? i'm guessing different types have different needs...

i think that's about it...i'm not planting for sure, but in order to actually decide i figure i need to know at least the basics about planted tanks. feel free to add in any other info you think would be useful to me. thanks in advance :)

Plants for your tank will depend on the kind of lighting that you have. You can have some low light plants, in any case. Do you have a piece of driftwood? if so you can attach java fern to it or some moss. There are other plants that can go into it also.

Plants will grow in gravel, but will need to have ferts added to it on a regular basis. CO2 isn't necessary if your lighting is under 3 watts per gal, and if you want to add CO2 you could just do a dyi setup.

When you vac a planted tank, just vac the area's where there isn't any plants. You can move stuff around and vac if you want but it isn't necessary.

I have had plants in gravel and they did fine, right now I am trying sand over potting soil and I have to say that my plants are doing great. I have never tried any really touchy plants.

plants in gravel you can vac around them, stirring it up like you normally would, with sand I am learning to hover just over the sand

I wouldn't worry about co2 injection in a 5 gal tank

Some people say that you need 1.5 WPG (Watts per gallon) others say 2+ it also depends on the plants you want to grow.

There are some really good fact sheets here that can give you some good information.


Listen to Sue, she has much more experience than I do, and she snuck in on me,lol

You can use my guide, the way I set-up planted tank. There is some good tips on how to make a DIY CO2 Yeast reactor without leakage. http://underwaterstories.blogspot.com/2006...d-aquarium.html

Regards, Dusko.