5g planted tank thoughts?

[BettaFishGirl]

I am planning to have a 5.5g guppy tank, but I wanted some opinions on things...
1. What do you all think of spider wood? I love the appearance but I have heard it decays and turn into a stump. Have you had success with it long term? And does it make the water foul when it decays?
2. This will be a heavily planted tank, but my local fish stores plants are a tad expensive, can I order them online? I was thinking aquarium co-op. How are your experiences with ordering plants online?
3. Shrimp?? I love cherry shrimp, and it would be cool if they would breed, could I add a couple to this tank or would they make it overstocked?

Thank you!

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Some might disagree with me, but I think 5.5g is a bit small for guppies. I'd recommend at least 10g. As for wood, yes it will decompose eventually, but it is an extremely slow process. I've never kept spider wood, but I've used smallish branches, and in my experience even small twigs take years to decompose and disintegrate.

Online plants are fine. The best online plant store I've found is buceplant.com, but there are other good ones.

Shrimp are most excellent in a small tank. I've never had any luck with cherry shrimp. There just seems to be something about my water they don't like. Amano shrimp are most excellent, and really fun to watch. In my experience shrimp, like snails, don't really add anything to the stocking level of a tank, since they are scavengers. I never intentionally feed my snails or shrimp; they simply clean up what's already there.

 

[Ram419]

I've used Aquarium co-op and gotten great plants from them. I was about to purchase from them again but they were out of stock on some things. So I found an Amazon store and the plants I got from them were top notch and came like 2 days earlier then it said it was going to be. The store is The Greenpro Store.

I have spider wood in one of my 5GAL I started about 2 months ago. I didn't do any boil on it, just put it in the tank. No tannins from it either.

 

[Fishies4Ever]

The 5.5 gallon tank is a bit small for guppies just because of their breeding. You could do some male guppies I think that would be fine.
You could also do some killifish they have bright colors like guppies and can be kept in small tanks I am pretty sure. I have driftwood in my tank and I love it! I have had it for a few months so not a lot of time for it to decay but it still looks good. I just ordered some plants from Marcus fish tanks. I haven’t ordered from there yet and haven’t gotten the plants yet but people have great reviews, the shipping is cheap, and they have a big selection. I wouldn’t worry to much about cherry shrimp overpopulating the tank because if you have a fish that will eat some of them it will keep their population down just as long as they don’t eat all of them before they breed. The plants should help to hide a lot of the shrimp so they should be fine. I’ll put an update about Marcus fishtanks once the plants arrive.

 

[BettaFishGirl]

Thank you! I would have an all male guppy tank so there wouldn't be any fry (although they are so darn cute). I will order some dwarf hair grass from Marcus fish tank since it's something like $14 for 3 packs of it-and free shipping! If the cherry shrimp do get overpopulated I could just move them into my other tanks too since they could have some shrimp too!