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My first tank - and it has plants!

S

ska

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Joined
Jun 15, 2021
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Location
Iceland
This is my first ever fish tank, a Fluval Flex 123L (32.5 g). Since I'm a house plant enthusiast and like things natural I wanted to do a planted tank. I knew basically nothing when I started so the assortment of plants is a bit random (I don't even know their names) but I hope it will grow in nicely.

My fish are also a bit random:

2x kribensis
6x harlequin rasboras
6x juvenile Denison barbs (will be moved to a friend with a bigger tank when they get too big)

Since I started the tank I've been looking at biotopes with the individual species that I have and really have fallen for West-African . So I might change out the rasboras and barbs for something more in that direction later.
I've also been looking at alot of aquascaping videos on youtube and for my next tank (yeah, I'm getting another one soon) I want to try something like that.

Also, ignore the rock on the bigger root to the right. It's just to keep it weighed down while it still wants to float and it's well secured.

So here's my first try at a planted tank :) Would be nice to get feedback and some pointers so I can learn more!
 

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Very nice first set up :)

Welcome to TTF :hi:
 
Slaphppy7 said:
Looks great for a first attempt...is the tank cycled?
Click to expand...
Yes! I did add the fish during the first week (beginner mistake) but I monitored the water quality closely and kept up with my water changes. Thankfully, I didn't lose any fish and everything went well but I should have been more patient.

I will defenitely do it differently next time regarding the cycle but also put more thought into the kind of fish I buy and not blindly trust the pet store staff. I'm really happy with the kribensis but I wish I had chosen something else as dither fish.
 
for your first attempt, it looks great, but african only for your second tank?
you'll find that creating an african biotope isn't the easiest thing to do
the availability of african fish is low and the price is high (e.g. congo tetra or schoudenti puffer - two that would be suitable for a smaller biotope). the vast majority of african fish grow to large sizes or aren't suitable for communities. i've only started on the problems with acquiring the fish so far, but i think you get my point.
if you have a lot of money, time, and space to waste, then sure, you can probably do it, but i'm not recommending it. if you're one for biotopes, i'd stick to some more available ones such as south american or asian, where there is much more selection.
 
realzalio said:
for your first attempt, it looks great, but african only for your second tank?
you'll find that creating an african biotope isn't the easiest thing to do
the availability of african fish is low and the price is high (e.g. congo tetra or schoudenti puffer - two that would be suitable for a smaller biotope). the vast majority of african fish grow to large sizes or aren't suitable for communities. i've only started on the problems with acquiring the fish so far, but i think you get my point.
if you have a lot of money, time, and space to waste, then sure, you can probably do it, but i'm not recommending it. if you're one for biotopes, i'd stick to some more available ones such as south american or asian, where there is much more selection.
Click to expand...
Thanks ☺️ I'm lucky as there is a breeder in my area that only breeds African species and is a West-African enthusiast. But maybe I should learn the tricks of the trade better before going into that, thanks for pointing that out!
 
oh, and, i forgot to add, do you know your water parameters?
since you're a beginner, before you settle on any stocking, you should have parameters as one of the deciding factors, because manipulating GH and pH takes finesse and isn't usually something a beginner can handle very easily.
 
realzalio said:
oh, and, i forgot to add, do you know your water parameters?
since you're a beginner, before you settle on any stocking, you should have parameters as one of the deciding factors, because manipulating GH and pH takes finesse and isn't usually something a beginner can handle very easily.
Click to expand...
I've measured the pH around 6.2 (with a laboratory grade pH meter from work) and live in a country with soft water.
 
ska said:
Yes! I did add the fish during the first week (beginner mistake) but I monitored the water quality closely and kept up with my water changes. Thankfully, I didn't lose any fish and everything went well but I should have been more patient.

I will defenitely do it differently next time regarding the cycle but also put more thought into the kind of fish I buy and not blindly trust the pet store staff. I'm really happy with the kribensis but I wish I had chosen something else as dither fish.
Click to expand...
Do you plan on trying for babies?
 
Really lovely tank! It's a nice tank to begin with, but love that you went the natural and live plant route for your first tank too :)

I did the same thing when I got my first tank. Knew I'd want live plants, bought a mixed batch of plants I didn't know, and scattered them randomly! Meant I wound up having to shift most of them around later, since I had some super tall ones at the front and small ones at the back, but no big deal. And it's pretty fun to garden that way, whether underwater or not! :D

I'd suggest moving the single stems of the same plants and planting them close together, a couple of cms space between each stem. It's tempting in a new tank to scatter them all over to try to make the tank look more filled, but I think that's a mistake. They have more visual impact when it looks like a small thicket of the same plant in one space, another different plant group over there, etc etc. I did the same scattering in a tank I set up last year, and someone here suggested I move the plants so the same species were together, and it definitely improved the look.

Like in that tank of mine, this l.sessiliflora and rotala looked kinda weedy, stringy and weird when scattered about as single stems, and would have looked more like a disorganised wild field of plants when they grew in;
DSCF2004.JPG


But by grouping species together and organising them a bit by their height, and looking for some contrast in leaf shape and colour, ended up like this;
DSCF2662 (1).JPG

(limnophilia sessiliflora back left, cyperus helferi back right, alternanthera reineckii "mini" in the middle, rotala bonsai in the foreground)

New tanks can look a little bare when you first plant them, just need to be patient and give them a couple of months for the plants to grow and fill out. :) It's surprising how fast they can grow out too. That first pic I showed above was taken 2nd September last year, nine days after setting up the tank and planting. Photo below was taken only a month after the first photo, on the 7th October.

DSCF3813.JPG


By March of this year, it had won tank of the month :D
DSCF4847.JPG


The website for Tropica has loads of layout ideas under their Inspiration tab here. Can browse some stunning aquascapes, get aquascaping ideas, and see which plants grab your attention! Then can look up the the care instructions for that plant on Tropica and see whether it might work in your tank. Have fun! Would be fantastic if you made a journal thread too to log your progress. I love following along as someone is scaping their tank!
 
AdoraBelle Dearheart said:
Really lovely tank! It's a nice tank to begin with, but love that you went the natural and live plant route for your first tank too :)

I did the same thing when I got my first tank. Knew I'd want live plants, bought a mixed batch of plants I didn't know, and scattered them randomly! Meant I wound up having to shift most of them around later, since I had some super tall ones at the front and small ones at the back, but no big deal. And it's pretty fun to garden that way, whether underwater or not! :D

I'd suggest moving the single stems of the same plants and planting them close together, a couple of cms space between each stem. It's tempting in a new tank to scatter them all over to try to make the tank look more filled, but I think that's a mistake. They have more visual impact when it looks like a small thicket of the same plant in one space, another different plant group over there, etc etc. I did the same scattering in a tank I set up last year, and someone here suggested I move the plants so the same species were together, and it definitely improved the look.

Like in that tank of mine, this l.sessiliflora and rotala looked kinda weedy, stringy and weird when scattered about as single stems, and would have looked more like a disorganised wild field of plants when they grew in;
View attachment 138990

But by grouping species together and organising them a bit by their height, and looking for some contrast in leaf shape and colour, ended up like this;
View attachment 138989
(limnophilia sessiliflora back left, cyperus helferi back right, alternanthera reineckii "mini" in the middle, rotala bonsai in the foreground)

New tanks can look a little bare when you first plant them, just need to be patient and give them a couple of months for the plants to grow and fill out. :) It's surprising how fast they can grow out too. That first pic I showed above was taken 2nd September last year, nine days after setting up the tank and planting. Photo below was taken only a month after the first photo, on the 7th October.

View attachment 138991

By March of this year, it had won tank of the month :D
View attachment 138992

The website for Tropica has loads of layout ideas under their Inspiration tab here. Can browse some stunning aquascapes, get aquascaping ideas, and see which plants grab your attention! Then can look up the the care instructions for that plant on Tropica and see whether it might work in your tank. Have fun! Would be fantastic if you made a journal thread too to log your progress. I love following along as someone is scaping their tank!
Click to expand...
Thank you ☺️ You're completely right regarding the high stemmed plants. I'll move them today!

And thanks for the link to the Tropica website. Looks like I'll be busy looking at the inspiration pics all day.

Your tank is gorgeous by the way!
 
ska said:
Thank you ☺️ You're completely right regarding the high stemmed plants. I'll move them today!

And thanks for the link to the Tropica website. Looks like I'll be busy looking at the inspiration pics all day.

Your tank is gorgeous by the way!
Click to expand...
Aaaww, thank you! It's all going to be changing soon, I planted an amazon sword in there knowing it would probably get too big for that sized tank, but it outgrew the tank faster than expected, so removing that will be fun. But I have to move all my tanks around soon anyway, so will be overhauling it anyway :)

Really happy if any of it helps! Please share photos once you've re-arranged things :D

That Tropica site is dangerous, I've lost hours on there too, and wind up with a huge list of plants I want to get in my shopping basket! But it's so useful for getting ideas and learning about the different plants. Some really beautiful aquascapes on there.

I'm sorta like you in liking normal plants, and so wanted to get into planted tanks as soon as I wanted to keep fish. But I'm terrible with houseplants. I've killed every houseplant I've ever bought. Even managed to rot a cactus once! But I'm pretty great with outdoor plants, so I love gardening. Weird!
 
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