Heavily Planted tank advice

[Pennellapuffer]

I am planning in the next couple of months on upgrading my 3 SAP’s from their current 28 gallon setup to a 75 gallon tank and would like it to be very heavily planted. The problem, however, is that I’m not sure if the tank can successfully thrive “heavily planted” with a lid, even if I invest in better lighting. Does anyone here know or have any success stories of heavily planted tanks with lids?

The reason I can’t go lidless is because I have several cats who are very curious and not at all afraid of the water unfortunately..

Any help/advice is very much appreciated!! Thank you!!

[Pufferpunk]

Also, jumping puffers! Cannot you use LEDs?

[Matts]

This is my current 60cm aquarium (15gal) with a lid, I used 3 led beams from a local brand. It's not an aquascape tank but I would consider it heavily planted:

And a previous one, also with lid:


So in my opinion you can perfectly have a heavily planted tank with a lid.
The right lighting is key and of course you'd need to provide sufficient nutrients and co2 if you want the plants to thrive.
The thing with most lid aquariums is the the lights it comes with aren't sufficient for a planted tank and you might have to DIY some better lights in.

I don't know how well puffers tolerate the needed macro and micro nutrition though, wich presumably you'll have to dose for a planted tank.

[Matts]

BTW also 2 cats here one of which absolutely loves water, so I don't have any tanks without lids either.
And always heavily plant my aquariums, but I do dose NPK, micro's and add co2.

[Pennellapuffer]

Thanks for the help Matt’s and Pufferpunk! I saw in an article on fish lights something about tank lid’s not working for heavily planted tanks so I was confused, thanks for clearing that up!

Also, your tanks are beautiful Matt’s! Thanks for sharing. What system for Co2 do you have set up and what ferts? Any information you don’t mind sharing would be much appreciated!

[Matts]

For the current tank (the 15gal, upper pic) I’m using an old dennerle co2 reducer with integrated solenoid I won back in 2012 in a local scaping contest. I’ve got it hooked up to a simple PH controller set to about 6.8, giving me a constant Co2 level around 20ppm. Before that I used a timer to turn off the co2 at night to prevent it getting to high.
I’m dosing a mixture homemade made of KNO3,K2SO4 and KH2PO4 powders, I aim for a nitrate and kalium lvl of around 15ppm and 1.5ppm for the Phosphates. For micro’s I use a Profito by easylife because of the dwarfshrimp, it doesn’t really contain copper unlike some other micro-mixes available here in Belgium.

But again, I’m not certain how well puffers would do with such Co2 concentrations or ferts.
For my puffer tank I’m also planning on using ferts and Co2 but at much, much lower concentrations, the plants i picked are all easy and low maintenance.
As the puffers are still in a quarantine tank I can’t tell you how well they'd fare in such an environment.

[Pennellapuffer]

Thanks for the advice. I will try to be wary with the CO2 levels and fertilizers as well.. So far, my puffers have done well in my very low tech 28 gallon with no Co2 and few fertilizers. I’d post a picture of it on here, but I’m not sure how? When I try to attach a picture it says the file size is too large. It has lots of Anubias and ferns and some Amazon swords.. but I’d like to expand
Keep me updated with how it goes with your puffers, I know they are very sensitive and i’ve already run into some troubles with mine.. I’ll try to continue to keep this thread updated as well as I go!!