Rookie question: Starting a simple planted tank

[enzotesta]

Hi there, I am in the process in starting another tank. I want live plants that will grow well. I understand that one would probably need co2 and lighting, etc etc....all the stuff I know nothing about ...
I just want a tank that plants will grow in...
My question is...what is the best substrate to use?....thanks

[Tarobot]

there are plants that grow without substrate as well, but normally you are looking at ecocomplete or fluval florabase or ada's amazonia for lots of nutrition for plants. i'd suggest looking around to see what plant you would like to grow then go from there because the lighting/co2 requirements are different. i myself dont like to plant anything with roots because i change the scaping too often and it makes everything such a mess so i do ferns and tie them to rocks or wood and ferns arent very demanding of co2 and lighting either.

[neven]

substrate is a personal preference more than what is the 'best'

With starting out, i recommend just not going for a large grain aquarium gravel like the various clown puke varieties.

Fine gravel (like ipu sells bulk) or the various sands work well provided you fertilize the water, for your heavy root plants, you can use root tabs or job spikes, just dont move the plants around. My personal preference is Tahitian moon sand

black fluorite looks great, but i wouldn't recommend it as a top coat since its a magnet to certain algaes. Currently i use it as an undercoat for 2 of my tanks

eco-complete, if you can stand the look of it, try it out, its pretty beginner friendly

crushed coral is simply NO.

Florabase, Fluval stratum, and ada amazonia can get messy, as they are a clay based soil substrate. They tend to be more costly, and can get messy, not very beginner friendly, especially since you will be moving things around a ton. Some will argue ADA is the best, well its true in certain aspects, which one out performs the other comes down to minute details, they all work. Algae blooms can happen when you move too many heavy rooted plants

Capped Dirt, as in soil/potting soil mix, topped with a fine gravel or sand, works just as well as ADA, and has the same risk of tank algae blooms when you get carried away. Its the new thing lately, even though its one of the oldest methods :P Not recommended for beginners either, you will simply move too much plants around.

[TomC]

If you decide against co2, I would recommend trying Flourish Excel (or metricide) to give the plants a good start. Also, get a timer.

[monkE]

look into what kind of plants you want to put in your tank. First find out what is available around you, and then figure out what it takes to grow them. I found out the hard way (and expensive way) that some plants don't react well to Excel or Metricide.

In my experience, the lighting is the most important and costly item. For a beginner (and this is how I started with plants) I would use bulk gravel, root tabs, flourish excel, flourish comprehensive (water table fertz) and I would spend some cash on a decent T5HO light fixture.

[monkE]

And if you want to understand CO2, lighting, etc.. have a look through the "sticky" threads in the plant section of this forum, there is some great information there about lighting, co2 as well as fertilizing.

Welcome to the planted world!

[Arcteryx]

The others will be too polite to say this, but just look through all the dumb questions I've asked here over the past 3 weeks I've gotten great answers that really helped me along the way!

I started out with easy plants, and am dosing the "default" values that come on the side of the Seachem liquid ferts (best to buy these at J&L, one of the forum sponsors). No CO2, using Excel. I have a Fluval Ebi which came with the Stratum substrate, so that decision was made for me.

Things are looking good so far. It helps that most of my plants can only be killed by the truly inept. So if there is one thing I can offer here, start out simple to build up some confidence.

Check out Tropica's site which categorizes plants by simple to expert, and also gives some great ideas for layout, complete with downloadable .PDFs and planting ideas.

Have fun, good luck!