Penelope .R
Fish Fanatic
I inherited this tank from a family member two years ago now. It came with two five year old silver dollars who had been living in a bare tank.
I'm giving the plants a shot, I've read of planted silver dollar tanks before but have never pulled it odd successfully. Over the years though I've found that mine don't like hornwort, water sprite, or java fern.
For the last few months I have been researching and planning to give it a shot, and I thought I'd document my results.
It's been five days since I started the overhaul and it's been going pretty okay.
I put down a layer of organic potting soil under a layer of the old play sand, I also used eco complete (the substrate my local fish store recommended), and medium pieces of red lava rock (there's no potting soil under the lava rock or eco complete).
I've read about using potting soil in an aquarium for a long time, I tried it in a 20 gallon aquarium first and grew hornwort and java fern very successfully. The tank has been running for two months and looks perfect.
I moved out all the fish for a day and drained it, I gave away eight of the Rosy barbs and kept five. I planted as many varieties of plants as I could think of, I have five different crypts, java fern, water sprite, lilaeospsis, valisneria, ambulia, anubias, and I floated duckweed and water spangles.
The softer plants have taken some nibbles but it's going pretty good so far, I'm feeding a veggie based flake and supplementing whatever organic veggies I have in my fridge for the silvers to nibble on.
I bought some Driftwood to attach the anubias and java fern to.
I also bought an automatic light, and even if the plants don't survive the light by itself makes the tank look great.
It's a start, I'm fully expecting some plants to die off over the next few weeks and I'm not getting my hopes up for the tank as a whole, but that's okay. I'm thinking of this as an experiment for now, and I feel like it could definitely swing either way, but it will at least look nice for a week or two.
You can see in the pictures what has been nibbled on, this is after everything has been planted for five days.
I'm planning to plant some more at some point this month, I'll get more crypts, water sprite, and ambulia specifically, I also want to plant pearl weed and take water lettuce from one of my other tanks and move it to this one once it is growing better. I want to add some java moss to the wood hardscape too, but that will have to wait a bit since right now I'm mostly focusing on fast growing plants.
Also, this is my 20 gal tank, it's only residents currently is a dwarf gourami and three ADF's, a nirite, and a bunch of pest snails. I'm planning to add some shrimp sometime soon. I just put in a banana plant and a few Creeping Charlie stems.
I'm giving the plants a shot, I've read of planted silver dollar tanks before but have never pulled it odd successfully. Over the years though I've found that mine don't like hornwort, water sprite, or java fern.
For the last few months I have been researching and planning to give it a shot, and I thought I'd document my results.
It's been five days since I started the overhaul and it's been going pretty okay.
I put down a layer of organic potting soil under a layer of the old play sand, I also used eco complete (the substrate my local fish store recommended), and medium pieces of red lava rock (there's no potting soil under the lava rock or eco complete).
I've read about using potting soil in an aquarium for a long time, I tried it in a 20 gallon aquarium first and grew hornwort and java fern very successfully. The tank has been running for two months and looks perfect.
I moved out all the fish for a day and drained it, I gave away eight of the Rosy barbs and kept five. I planted as many varieties of plants as I could think of, I have five different crypts, java fern, water sprite, lilaeospsis, valisneria, ambulia, anubias, and I floated duckweed and water spangles.
The softer plants have taken some nibbles but it's going pretty good so far, I'm feeding a veggie based flake and supplementing whatever organic veggies I have in my fridge for the silvers to nibble on.
I bought some Driftwood to attach the anubias and java fern to.
I also bought an automatic light, and even if the plants don't survive the light by itself makes the tank look great.
It's a start, I'm fully expecting some plants to die off over the next few weeks and I'm not getting my hopes up for the tank as a whole, but that's okay. I'm thinking of this as an experiment for now, and I feel like it could definitely swing either way, but it will at least look nice for a week or two.
You can see in the pictures what has been nibbled on, this is after everything has been planted for five days.
I'm planning to plant some more at some point this month, I'll get more crypts, water sprite, and ambulia specifically, I also want to plant pearl weed and take water lettuce from one of my other tanks and move it to this one once it is growing better. I want to add some java moss to the wood hardscape too, but that will have to wait a bit since right now I'm mostly focusing on fast growing plants.
Also, this is my 20 gal tank, it's only residents currently is a dwarf gourami and three ADF's, a nirite, and a bunch of pest snails. I'm planning to add some shrimp sometime soon. I just put in a banana plant and a few Creeping Charlie stems.
I'm just getting started with plants and aquascaping but I'm having a lot of fun.
