Several friends of mine at work (as well as myself) are tropical fish keepers. Being fish nerds, we spend water cooler-time talking about our aquariums and how our fish and plants are doing.

I've kept freshwater tropical fish on and off since I was a child. Today I have a 50 gallon planted aquarium with a pair of Angel fish. I used to have a planted Discus tank but I got tired of doing the water changes.

Two friends have gotten interested in keeping planted tanks are preparing to set up new planted aquariums. This topic will be used by them an possibly others to document their decisions about tank size, lighting source, the amount of time to leave the lights on, the number and type of tank inhabitants, and other stuff.

There’s a lot of material on the Internet on how to keep a planted aquarium but it’s always interesting to read the experience of regular people setting up planted tanks for a moderate cost. There's often ups and downs along the way. It should be interesting to watch their saga unfold here.

Check back to read how things turn out and please join in on the conversation.