Better yet just swap out his sponge for your new one. That way you get
all his nice happy bacteria, he gets a new sponge filter and both of
y'all are happy. Add a few fish to feed the bacteria, some low/moderate
light plants like amazon swords and enjoy your tank. Just remember to
feed the plants and provide them with a nice full spectrum light to
grow. Leave the expensive lighting CO2 stuff alone till you are ready
for that part of the hobby. Personally I don't use that stuff and all is
well. Also keep in mind that many fish don't like extreme lighting
anyways.

Vicki

OK, thats an improvement on my plan Vicki, thanks.

On the subject of lights and plants: the tank is 75 gallon (US), 4' long
and has space for 3 tubes. =A0 =A0 I plan to start off with a modest
number of plants, but hope to develop this into a heavily planted tank
as time goes by (I work in a tree nursery, so love plants and the
challenge of aquatic plants seems like a potential consuming hobby). Any
recommendations on the combination of tubes I should buy?



You sound a lot like me. My husband has a full service garden center
and after messing with ponds for a while I decided to do the planted
aquarium thing. I have a 55g myself with the factory hood on it. I
only have low/moderate light plants and use two 15w 10,000K deep reef
lights. They are for coral and plant use and get the light down good
for my deep tank. If you plan on only growing similar plants than that
is all you will need. Just make sure that you read the label on the
tubes first and make sure that they are full spectrum and not acnic
(sp?) bulbs. You can even try a 50/50 bulb on the third spot for a
bulb. It will not do much for the plants but will really bring out the
colour of your fish.

If you plan on growing higher level lighting plants than there are folks
in here that know more about that.

Vicki