My 20Long planted

[Emg]

I just started up this tank about 3 weeks ago. I have a bonded pair of german blue rams that I had raised. There are also 3 otocinclus in here too.

I only have a whisper 20 running on this tank...with no carbon...only the floss bag that comes with the filter. I plan on picking up a sponge of some sort to put in there though. I picked the whisper filter because they have almost no effect on the surface of the water like other power filters do...being a planted tank and all...I'm trying to keep surface aggitation at a minimum.

The substrate is Echo-Complete for planted tanks and I dose with Flourish Excel once daily for now...may cut back on that a bit when the plants get well established.

I have an assortment of plants in there...anubias, water sprite, water wisteria, water lily, one moneywort, small amazon swords, crypts and I think an aponogeton or two and I don't know what that is to the right of the wisteria...it came with a fish I bought..it was just a small sprig when I got it but MY..how it's grown !

Hopefully the plants will fill in quickly....though I only have 40watts of lighting on the tank at present..I could add at most..20 more simply by purchasing two small strip lights for those 2 1/2 gallon tanks and placing them on the glass fliptop. I use those 10watt flourescents in those that you screw into incandescent strips. Maybe with more light I could put some glasso (that small ground cover plant) in foreground here....that would be nice...

The driftwood is real...but the other log/rock type things to the left and right are just a jumble of fake decorations that I had laying around. I know....the purists in this hobby would frown on that..but they don't look too bad with this setup and I'm hoping the plants will do a good job of camoflaging the "fakeness" of them...lol......I took all the fake plants off that were siliconed onto these things.

I think that's all I can say about this tank...so here's some pics....







A pic of one of the rams in this tank...would have been a nice picture if the fish hadn't blurred...lol..that plant on the right is the one I'm not sure what it is..

[|squee|]

Looks wild and untamed at this point. I didn't know those were fake decorations, good job on that one.

The driftwood seems like a good place to build the scape around. Glosso will be good, but you need a midground plant to complete the picture.

[Emg]

Yeah, most definitely need more plants in there. I have a batch of water sprite behind the fake log/rock on the left side. You can't see it very well but when it grows in it'll fill that back corner in pretty well...I hope... Also, the lily just behind the driftwood to the right should fill in pretty well too. I'll be putting another bulb of one of those back there too at some point. That one little sprig of moneywort is all that's left of a batch I didn't have a proper home for (lighting wise).. when I first started out with the planted tanks. I really like that unnamed plant in the middle, between the wisteria and the taller crypt. It's starting to grow another branch. I do have some plants growing out in a "plant" tank I setup for that purpose. When they get a bit bigger I'll transplant them into this tank.

My rams just layed a batch of eggs in the back left corner last night and pulled up one of the water sprite plants...lol....I'm going to let mom and dad raise these fry and if it works out..fine, if not, that's fine too. I have a batch of halfblack fancy guppies that I need to setup a growout tank for.....momma guppy was busy having babies while the rams were busy laying eggs... I just don't know how the heck I got myself into this hobby...lol...but it is fun !

Thanks for the comments and suggestions Squee ! Would you have any ideas plantwise...that you think would make a good choice for the midground space ?

[Justikanz]

Think that plant looks like a sprig of Hygrophila Polysperma...