First tank.. substrate?

[muckluck]

Hey guys,

I just got a 10 gallon aquarium I bought in a set at walmart. With the tank I bought a 15 lb bag of plain old beige colored gravel. After that I went to PetCo and bought a few plants I thought would look good and not be too big for my aquarium. Now the kid at the PetCo told me I could just through them in the gravel and be fine. After reading a bit it seems that I need a finer gravel or even a sand for the plants and my future kuhli loaches. Will I be fine, or should I buy some sand?. Here's a bad picture of how it is now:

[Only Registered Users Can See Links.]( sorry for the crappy quality )

[muckluck]

P.S.!
Here's what I want to do with it:

x Black Tetras
x Cories
x Kuhli Loaches

I don't know how many yet, but that's what I want to do. Oh, is there some kind of directory to find LFSes? The two PetCos around me don't carry loaches.

[Lady Hobbs]

That would make a nice neon or cardinal tank with your corys and loaches.

I don't have any decent planting substrate either. I'm actually using sand and stone mixed together and using plant tabs ferts. Not the way I wanted to go but it seems to be ok. Sand can compact down not allowing the roots to grow and I hoped the gravel included might prevent that.

[Boertjie]

I agree with Lady Hobbs on the tetras with your selection.
The loaches need a lot of hiding spots.
If you are gonna keep the gravel, I suggest that you build them something like a cave under the gravel.
We also have gravel with our kuli loaches and Gemstone created a cave with a saucer turned upside down and covered it with the gravel. You cannot see the cave from the front but the loaches love it!

[DTB1]

Being a small tank a school of one type of fish would look nice.

[gm72]

The gravel itself should be fine actually. I have a few planted tanks in which the substrate is just gravel and everything seems to be doing great.

[Anja]

Me too, just gravel, lots of plants. I use a tiny bit of liquid fertilizer occasionally, but mostly I forget and the fish do the fertilizing. Seems to suit the plants just fine. Since I have low light, lots of fertilizer would be wasted anyway. They don't display explosive growth habits, of course, but they do grow and look healthy.

[muckluck]

Alright, good to know. I'm gonna get to building that cave, sounds like a good idea. Thanks everyone.

[muckluck]

Just out of curiousity, can anyone identify the big stemmed plant to the right of the rock? It looks like this plant [Only Registered Users Can See Links.] and that's not an aquatic plant. Should I be concerned?

[PUNISHER VETTE]

If the lighting came with the tank it might not be very adaquite for live plants....

You'll need up around 2 watts per gallon of lighting.
If you have the right lighting and nutrients the plants should do fine in that substrate.

[KingFisher]

I have that same set up from Walmart. I suggest you replace the incandescent bulbs with two 10 watt compact fluorescent bulbs. They should be right there between the tanks and the fish food at Walmart. This will give you 2 watts per gallon and the plants will grow fine, as long as you give them some fertilizer. If that plant is Dracaena sanderiana as you suspect, I suggest you remove it right away and replace it with some other plants. Egeria Densa, also known as Elodea, is easy to grow and looks great. When it reaches the water surface, just break it off half way down and replant the tops. Before you know it you will have so much you will be throwing the extra away. After you have fish in the tank for a while, their waste will feed the plants and they will grow even better.
I also like that idea of making a cave for the kuhlies. They will enjoy it.

[muckluck]

Yep, I'm gonna rip it out. I think I'm gonna start over, keep the Sagittaria and Swords and plant some of the Egeria all along the back.

[TorqueWorks]

If that plant is Dracaena sanderiana as you suspect, I suggest you remove it right away and replace it with some other plants.

What's the problem with this plant?

[KingFisher]

What's the problem with this plant?
This is what PlantGeek.com says about the plant: "Not a true aquarium plant. Will rot, die and pollute your tank. "

[Fishead]

Dracaena sanderiana is not an aquatic plant, thus will rot and foul up your tank.

[gm72]

As with the above posts. Unfortunately not everything sold as an aquarium-safe plant is truly a plant that will live immersed in water. Just as unfortunately, not all of the information you receive at a pet shop is accurate.

[KingFisher]

As with the above posts. Unfortunately not everything sold as an aquarium-safe plant is truly a plant that will live immersed in water. Just as unfortunately, not all of the information you receive at a pet shop is accurate.
You hit the nail right on the head. When I first decided to go with real plants in my tanks instead of fake ones, I went to Petsmart and brought home a bunch of those plants in the clear plastic tubes. After further research, I discovered that most of them were non-aquatics and that I had just wasted a bunch of money. Needless to say I was not very happy.

[Fishead]

As with the above posts. Unfortunately not everything sold as an aquarium-safe plant is truly a plant that will live immersed in water. Just as unfortunately, not all of the information you receive at a pet shop is accurate.
Unfortunitly most of the information you recieve at the pet shop is usually inaccurate, or at the least misleading. Not to say that there are not reputable sellers out there, but most are trained and paid to sell sell sell... I used general purpose contractors sand in my first planted tank. Washed the sand really really really well and it worked amazing. I am posting what that tank looked like. I used the halogen pucklights to light it, and it worked awsome!

[muckluck]

Unfortunitly most of the information you recieve at the pet shop is usually inaccurate, or at the least misleading. Not to say that there are not reputable sellers out there, but most are trained and paid to sell sell sell... I used general purpose contractors sand in my first planted tank. Washed the sand really really really well and it worked amazing. I am posting what that tank looked like. I used the halogen pucklights to light it, and it worked awsome!
Well that's good news. I'm gonna take a trip to a LFS and see what they have ( I hear they have really bad prices on stuff like that though). Petcos and other chains around me have nothing beside some kind of marine sand that comes packaged immersed in salt water and the typical gravel.

[muckluck]

I ended up just buying some eco-complete and the grass in my aquarium is also Mondo grass, an unaquatic plant. So to all the newbies like myself, never shop at PetCo unless you are 100% certain on what to buy.

[PUNISHER VETTE]

I ended up just buying some eco-complete and the grass in my aquarium is also Mondo grass, an unaquatic plant. So to all the newbies like myself, never shop at PetCo unless you are 100% certain on what to buy.

thats a good lesson to learn and at least you figured it early.