Planted tank?!

[JoanToBa]

Hi everyone, I'm thinking on upgrading my 1.65 gallon minimalistic opae ula bowl setup (just white sand and a big rock with live snails) to a more decent 5 gallon one. I'm thinking on changing the salinity from 1.013 SG (17 ppt) to about 1.008 SG (11 ppt), changing the white sand to black sand and planting it with Cryptocoryne ciliata, Lilaeopsis brasiliensis, Samolus valerandi or any other that can do in that range.

What do you think? Is it possible?

[jcfrank922]

My 1.5 gallon tank has no plants. I went completely basic. Aragonite sand, a lava rock, a sea fan and some sea shells. I started out with 20 shrimp about a year ago, and they've multiplied to about 50! But, here is an article on brackish water plants that you might find helpful. http://www.aquariadise.com/7-hardy-plan ... -aquarium/

[Mustafa]

Forget that article...it's the type of article I have been trying to advocate *against* for well over a decade and a half now. It's utterly wrong and leads to lots of Supershrimp deaths. None of those plants will survive (forget thrive) at Supershrimp appropriate salinities. Just don't do it. Even at really low salinities most of them just hang in there until they die. They just look green for a long time which makes uninformed people believe that their plants are alive and doing well. It's one of those really wrong things that got repeated often enough that many people actually believe it.

So, everyone, please ignore the article above and any other article recommending freshwater plants are "brackish tolerant". They're all utter nonsense.

[mike.d]

I don't think a planted tank is compatible with opae. For one thing plants need CO2. In a freshwater tank or even a brackish fish tank, they'd get that from the air through a bubbler or a filter stream breaking the surface of the water. Opae like calm water, so you wouldn't have that.

[Flippers]

I don't think a planted tank is compatible with opae. For one thing plants need CO2. In a freshwater tank or even a brackish fish tank, they'd get that from the air through a bubbler or a filter stream breaking the surface of the water. Opae like calm water, so you wouldn't have that.

Are there any calm bubblers that would benefit Opae Ulas or just forget it all together? My concern is that, in the wild, their environment is a lot larger and has gentle but existing water flow... How do we mimic this?

[mike.d]

I say forget it all together. I'm not sure how you'd exactly mimic their natural environment. Some kind of two tank system where you're adding CO2 to water in a second tank then mimicking a daily ebb and flow of the tides?

That sounds like a lot of work for animals that are perfectly happy to sit on desk in a jar.

[Nellyville41]

Forget it all together