Planted Guppy Tank (54L)

Essjay said:

@AdoraBelle Dearheart Can we just clarify for PlasticGalaxy. You said frogbit takes over and you can't get rid of it, but you also said

Frogbit can't be both your favourite and the one you hate most Do you mean duckweed is the one you hate most, the one that you can never get out of the tank if you don't like it, the one that's totally invasive? Just one leaf missed behind the filter and duckweed will take over again.

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Essjay said:

I've only attempted water lettuce once, years ago. It died. But then so did duckweed Yes, I killed duckweed. Since I've got more into plants water lettuce might now survive in my tanks.

The floating plants I've had success with are:
salvinia, till it all went brown and died during a heatwave
water sprite, which I removed as it got huge and the plants all tangles up together making it hard to take some plants out
frogbit, my current floating plant. That is much easier to thin out and when the roots grow too long I just trim them. That only adds a couple of minutes to a water change.

Hornwort can also be used as a floating plant. If you plant one end of the stem in the substrate, the stems grow so long they'll reach the surface and carry on growing across the surface. I once had some. Rther than plant it in the substrate I wound the stems round some branchy wood. I removed that as well in the end as it was growing so well it was strangling the other plants.




As a very general rule of thumb, floating plants with smooth leaves do well. Floating plants with hairy/furry leaves don't do as well. That's probably why the salvinia and water lettuce died in my tanks - they have furry leaves while water sprite and frogbit have smooth leaves.



Edit to add - I forgot about red root floater. Members on here have that but I've never tried it.

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AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

Yep, I meant duckweed is my most hated, I was tired when I was typing!

Still can't believe you managed to kill duckweed... lol. I can't get rid of it even with bleach!

Also yes, good point about getting plants that were grown in the UK/EU, that I lost a lot of shrimp when I decided to just pick up a couple of plants from my LFS, not knowing they'd changed supplier and were now coming in from Indonesia, covered in a pesticide that almost wiped out my entire colony of shrimp. Only moving the survivors to a new tank with all brand new substrate/hardscape/equipment, and in-vitro grown plants, saved the rest of the colony.

@PlasticGalaxy I like Pro-Shrimp as a site to get plants from. All of their stock is shrimp safe, obviously! Look under the 'potted plants' section and you can find some for good prices too. £3.99 for a nicely niced potted plant is decent. Even when you only get a small pot of something, it usually grows quickly enough that you have more than you need, so resist the urge to buy two or three pots of the same thing, unless you're trying to grow a carpet.

This is how quickly they can fill out and grow. This is the 'new', uncontaminated shrimp tank, day one
August 25th:
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To this, October 5th. Less than 2 months, only a few other plants added. The frogbit came in a tiny pot, but soon took off, and that's the long roots you see in this pic. I trim the roots now and then, only takes a minute. Shrimp and fish really enjoy the roots on floating plants.
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Same tank now, I'll be removing the amazon sword too when I revamp this tank, way too big for this tank already, after only seven months.
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PlasticGalaxy said:

Your set up is stunning here, I love that rainforesty/dark woods look. What sort of shrimp do you keep, out of curiosity?

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AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

Thank you! I like to think it looks sorta rainforesty too, but it's more a case of "let the plants go wild without much planning nor taming" style

Just added another £30 of plants to my Pro-Shrimp basket 'cos the TOTM contest has spurred me to want to work on this tank again

I have mainly red cherry shrimp (neocaridina davidii). They're one of the easiest shrimp to manage, although they still like a stable, mature tank, so if you want shrimp it's worth planting out the tank, working on getting the cycle and plants really stable, and waiting until it's been up for 2-3 months before adding shrimp. But then again, I moved my shrimp from the contaminated tank to this one the day I set it up, so if you have a mature filter on another tank, you can do it sooner with some care!

Also have six amano shrimp in here, added them recently hoping they'd eat the black beard algae that's started to appear, and 'cos I've never had amanos before. I like 'em!

Female red cherry shrimp:
View attachment 130936

Mixed shrimp since I mixed colours, so you get some wild-types and some less bright. Plus males are less vibrant than females usually, unless you buy really high grade (and expensive!) shrimp.
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Amano shrimp
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If you want to keep a high grade, intense colour, stick to one colour alone. Can get reds, some gorgeous blues (my favourite!) yellows, jade green, even black. Or rili, which are nice too. I'd avoid caridina shrimp for now, they're more sensitive and delicate and need more precise water parameters, neocaridina are more adaptable to a wide range.

If you want to breed them to sell, or want a really high grade and intense colour, better to stick to one colour neocaridina per tank. If you mix colours, they'll interbreed and get lower grade offspring, and eventually revert to wild brown types. I'm only keeping mine for fun, so I threw some blues in with my red cherry shrimp, and get a lot of lower grade shrimp. But I enjoy it since they then produce all kinds of interesting colours. Have had some nice oranges, more reds and blues, some black (those are cool), they even threw one perfect rili baby once! Even the wild brown types are pretty cool looking to me, so I don't regret mixing the colours Later on down the line I'll have just blues in one tank, and cull the lower quality ones so I can sell high grade blues.

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PlasticGalaxy said:

Ooh, I'm most definitely going to look into shrimp soon then! Right now I've got a blue vampire/giant fan shrimp, I was planning on getting more but they're £20 a piece ?

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AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

I've never kept a bamboo or vampire shrimp, definitely would like to get one at some point! I'm going to be moving and revamping all of my tanks (have four) soon though, so no more fish or shrimp until after that!

I say that, but I went ahead and bought a pleco the other week anyway...

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PlasticGalaxy said:

I wish you luck!! Vampire shrimp are pretty scary honestly. Here's mine from the day I got him. Very fast and very freakish. But I love him either way!

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AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

He's pretty awesome looking!

Some nice cories and guppies there too! Fish look really good, and healthy.

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Essjay said:

If you want shrimps, be careful buying plants. If they came from outside the EU, or if the LFS doesn't know where they came from, don't buy the plants.
Plants from outside the EU are treated with snail killer which will also kill shrimps.

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PlasticGalaxy said:

12.03.2021
So, I think I've finally gotten my stock all thought out:
1x bristlenose pleco
12x guppies (not completely sure on the number)
6x amano shrimp
6x bronze + albino corydoras (3 of each)

Filter, heater and thermometer are all in place, did my first water change yesterday since the water was quite murky. Everything seems to be in working order. Now on a hunt for a glass lid and possibly a black backing for the tank.

Yesterday I made two "barriers" out of airline tubing so that my duckweed won't get completely out of control when it begins to grow. The duckweed itself should have arrived yesterday, but unfortunately hasn't. Seems like it won't be coming today either.

Tomorrow I'm planning on making a trip to my LFS to get some rocks and look to see if there's any other plants that could make a good addition. Might look for a small filter or something, too.

Yes, the cabinet and wires are quite a mess right now.

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AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

That's a pretty heavy stocking for a 14 gallon. Bear in mind that bronze/albino (if the albino are also aeneus) can get fairly large, it's not one of the dwarf cory species, and plecos have a huge bioload. Plus if you're going for a mix of male and female guppies to breed, the tank will be full to bursting with fry within months.

Do you have back up tanks for fry? Or a larger tank to move the pleco to when it gets bigger?

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