My very first planted aquarium!

First up, I am back...after dunno 3 or more years or so of absence, where I failed in my duties as a fish keeper due to laziness and neglect, causing my bichir comm tank to wipe, I have decided to start anew with a planted tank.







Well...firstly, the three big plants of the left, and the rightmost plant are plastics. I use plastic as firstly, I am not confident of my ability to keep the plants alive, secondly, I have not gotten CO2.

Also, I messed up! Should have read through some of the guides on Iwagumi's or Amano's aquascaping guide. Now my current one is just a big jumbled mess of various plants, both real and fake that I thought looked nice.

Also, choosing to use a black backpaper and the big driftwood deco as "focal point" was a bad choice, since the driftwood can hardly be seen.

So I got rid of the black backpaper.

Any advice on choosing a proper backpaper color to bring out the colors of the dark brown driftwood(to turn it into the focal point). Not an easy task I know, considering the distractingly vibrant colors of the real and fake plants, some magic is needed here.

There are currently five small kuhli loaches, two "rainbow fish", and five assassin snails.

EDIT: Tank dimensions are 48 x 30 x 30.

[thomas-seah]

bro, i'd suggest white one to make it brighter since your tank is small.

sorry, those plastic ones don't look good to me, cos their leaves are too big, making the overall appearance out of ratio. just my point of view...

anyway good job, bro !

Thank you, you are too kind.

Yea, I can't find a proper way to deco the plastic ones.



This is what it looks like, as of this morning.

The fern on the rightmost is in fact bigger than the plastic one, but the filter is too strong, and is pushing it downwards.

I tried putting the plastic purple plant on the driftwood to make an obvious focal point, but the filter kept blowing it off too -_-

[thomas-seah]

i guess u don't have a rainbar. maybe u might want to consider install 1 to sovle this problem ?

Originally Posted by thomas-seah

i guess u don't have a rainbar. maybe u might want to consider install 1 to sovle this problem ?

It's a large corner filter, and my neons genuinely seem to enjoy swimming against the current, so I will let it stay...for now.

Nicely done.

No offence but it seems 'overcrowded'~! Maybe I am a guy who go for simple setup.. Nice work after all i used to use plastic plants but had a hard time cleaning the algae afterwards....cheerZ!

Sorry bro, noob question, so much plastic plants in the water, won't affect the fishes?

It does seem that my setup is problematic now.

3 of my 5 Kuhli loaches went missing, and I simply cannot find them.

When I drop food inside, even at very small quantities, some are bound to float and get trapped between plants. Just did a through search of my tank and saw at least 3 patch of rotten uneaten food.

My experience is that my loaches are good at squeezing in the smallest places. They also sometimes burrow themselves into the substrate. Did u like take out all your plants? If u have not, then don't be too surprised that u can't find them.