Anyone with a little freshwater knowledge...

[Bruce Spiegelman]

I'm going to give one of my unused Innovative marine 10's to a friend for a small freshwater tank. It presently is just the tank, internal pump in the rear chamber and heater. What else is she going to need? Can she just used a media basket instead or any kind of HOB filter? Does she just run a sponge and carbon? What cheap light is best for some plants? Anything else she'll need? Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[nbaiju]

Beamworks have some cheap lights.

 

[Bruce Spiegelman]

Beamworks have some cheap lights.

Those are too wide. The tank is 12" wide. Too bad.

 

[roostertech]

My fav planted tank light
https://www.amazon.com/Finnex-Planted-Automated-Aquarium-Controller/dp/B00U0HMWLI/

I love the automated light cycling. Though it might be wee bit overkill if you are only going to do low tech plant.

Since you already have a rear chamber, just stuff it the same way you would stuff cannister filter

Overflow -> coarse sponge -> filter media in mesh bag (I like Eheim substrat) -> fine sponge -> pump back out. I never run any carbon.

 

[Ibn]

Run any sort of plain 'ole LED for that. Just worry about biological filtration and the plants and substrate takes care of the rest.

Old 3.5G tank when it was converted to planted.

Long 10G tank also converted to planted.

ADA 30c (8.5G) before it split at the top seam and had to be taken down.

That tank there used a custom LED fixture that a friend made and had sitting around.

For reference, before it was grown in, I pulled some PAR figures from the fixture.

The lights were too strong for the tank overall, so I never ran the blues from it. The figures above were just from the whites at ~40% intensity.

 

[MarAquatic]

You can try one of those amazon flood light led and stuff the rear chamber with filter sponges and bio rings