Tophat665

Depends on the plants and the lighting. I have one tank (the one in the pictures) that's pretty high light (3.8 watts per gallon over a shallow tank). That one needs flourish excel every other night or I get black algae. Not a big pain in the butt, though, as I just add it into the feeding routine. It'd be a lot easier to hook up a CO2 tank to a PH driven solenoid, but that's more money than I want to spend.

The biggest time-suck in a planted tank is trimming, and that can be as hard or easy as you want it to be. The 50 gallon pictured should probably get a good trimming every week. I generally get it every other week.

Course, if you want to go into the whole estimative index fertilization method, you need to do a 50% water change weekly, without fail, and there's a daily regimen of several different fertilizer mixtures on a rotating basis. That would be a huge time commitment that I want nothing to do with. (It is much less expensive that using prepared fertilizers, though).

Bottom line: Under 2 watts per gallon of lighting, a planted tank requires minimal extra attention, and can allow you to stretch your water changes a bit or up your fish load. Over 2 wpg , they require a bit more attention and expense, but that can be minimized too.

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