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Hi guys,

After buying a larger tank for my YBS, I decided to use the smaller tank to grow Anubias to feed my YBS. It's said that Anubias is easy to grow, even for a brown thumb and total newbie to aquatic plants, that's me. I plan to grow it in pebble rock floor.

Ok, so hopefully you guys can help answer some basic questions or point me to answers:

I plan to grow it in my garage, it won't get regular sun light, so what kind of light bulb do I need?

the garage will get colder than the house so what temperature do I need to keep the water at?

Is there a thread or website that clearly spells out what I need to know?

If I can keep the Anubias alive, I'll venture out to other turtle food.

I don't know a lot about this but I'm going to give it a shot anyways. Light 6500 k florecent as close to the plants as you can. Water about 70°. I grow vegetables indoors so did I miss anything guys?

so after a bit more reading on the net I think all I need is a CFL bulb that puts out 6500K frequency of light. So I headed on down to the Home Depot and found these for $9. The "professional" lighting sets up I found on-line were like a couple hundred or so.

so the question is, will these get the job done?

Your best bet is to research on a planted tank forum. Those bulbs you posted won't produce very much PAR so the light won't penetrate into the water very far. They make aquatic plant light fixtures both LED and T5. Also if you're going to grow them fast enough for your turtle, you'll need some root tabs in the substrate and some carbon in the water. Without going high tech and doing the CO2 thing... you could just add some Flourish Excel to the water. Having some fish in the tank will also help... maybe some feeder guppies. Their waste acts as fertilizer for the plants and they themselves will breed and become turtle snacks.

If you're interested, I did a planted tank in my build thread linked in my signature.

http://www.plantedtank.net/articles/Bas ... ed-Tank/4/

Thank the lord someone finally chimed in on this. I was just taking a shot in the dark. Thanks Veip.

Yeppers! I need to do a better job of looking through these threads more often.

I'm happy to help with any planted tank questions but there are other forums dedicated to just that topic because it's a complete hobby itself. I really did enjoy my planted tank. It's fishkeeping, building stuff, chemistry, and botany all rolled into one hobby.

Well I'm sure tj will appreciate it.

yes I do!
Thanks!
I've been reading through an aquatic plant forum but sometimes those guys talk way above my head, so I'm sure I'll have more questions

I don't think anubius is a great choice to grow as a feeder for a turtle. It's fairly slow growing even, in my high light, co2 injected tanks. You should try floating plants like frog bit, water lettuce, Water Wisteria (Hygrophila difformis), anacharis, and water hyacinth.

Thanks Duck, I'll be adding those once I get the basics of tank plants figured

+1 for anacharis. It takes all nutrients from the water and it grows well in low tech setups too. Low tech = non CO2 injected.

Anubius would be a terrible choice as a feeder. I grow it in my planted tank and it's probably doubled in size in 2 years.

Fast growing plants are going to be things like Anacharis, Water Lettuce and Water Hyacinth.

Also, these need fairly high light. The simplest way to grow them is outside. Fill up a bucket with tank water, throw some plants in there, make sure it gets a good amount of light, come back in a week and your plants will have multiplied!

Linus wrote:Anubius would be a terrible choice as a feeder. I grow it in my planted tank and it's probably doubled in size in 2 years.

yea, I didn't know what I was doing when I bought it, just followed the PetSmart lady's advice

Linus wrote: Fast growing plants are going to be things like Anacharis

yep, that's what I've learned I should get....