First Planted Setup

[footballe]

Hi all, attached is my first 1 ft cube tank after 1 day. Suggestions and comment welcomed.


Will be adding 5 stebai cory after about 2 weeks and maybe a few guppies. If the plan is a low tech setup. What do I have to do after this ?

[Verminator]

Oddly enough i like the rock in this tank. Usually i would steer clear of such rocks, they're smooth edges often don't fit in scapes well. But this works oddly quite well i think.

One thing to note is your choice of plants. The smaller ones are fine, but the larger ones...lets just say get big. First off the thin looking, quite stragly plant is Ceratopteris Thalictroides. Its a truely stunning plant when healthy and mine threw up new a new leaf every week basically. It was placed in the center of my 2ft tank and it was the only plant in what was then my mollie fry rearing tank. It quickly spread so that all 4 sides of my tank were being touched by its leaves and it grew out of the water by and inch or two. So its safe to say this plant will grow to 30+ cm. Secondly the big red leaves are unmistakenly a Nymphaea of sort. I'm inexperienced with this plant so i can't determine from a picture alone which variant it is. I can tell you however that it easily reaches 80+ cm and will dominate a scape. Theres some debate whether this plant can 'learn', effectively, where the water surface is. Basically once a leaf is thrown up and reaches the water surface other leaves will race to the surface too so it can grow quicker and bigger. The third green plant i'm unsure what it is exactly, possibly a Tonina?, i don't know. But by the looks of it it'll be a big grower too. Its a stem plant so its certainly very possible.

In short, i don't think these plants are suitable for a scape of this size, certainly the first two i mentioned about. Perhaps removing them and replacing them with easy to grow, yet smaller growing plants such as Eleocharis Acicularis or Echinodorus Tenellus. Hope this helps, and isnt to critical. It certainly is a nice scape though.

To answer your last question. If its a low tech setup then there shouldnt really be much to do Thats the idea, and the beauty of the concept. Aside from keeping the lighting right and consistent each day, water changes whenever required, and the occasional trimming (your tank probably won't need it if at all) there isnt much else to do. Maybe dosing a small amount of fert once a week just to give the plants a little help is all that aught to be required.

[JadeIceGreen]

I like your scape, and its very good for a first time. Mine was horrendous, lol.
Your rock is nice too and I liked the way you played with two different kinds of soil. What is the plant that you planted in your black soil? Looks like HC, if it is, it will not survive for long in a low tech environment.

[footballe]

thanks for the suggestions, certainly helps especially the parts on the plants used.

The biggest problems i have as a newbie, are identifing plants. Besides HC, the rest of them, i have no ideas what are they and their requirements. To add to the misery, the LFS that i got them don't label them and they are quite busy to entertain me.

The big red plant will be removed soon, looks so unnatural here. I had found another that look more suitable to fit into this scape.

Actually, I am those type that prefer natual and more realitic scape. In this example, I was trying to create a beach, with the stebai cories playing there.
The rocks, I happened to like the big one too.

Next will be the carpet grass, they have to be short, hence HC was chosen. Behind them, ideally should be coconut trees, but it can't be found at such a scale, thus I used those stems plants that are tall with less leaves. For the height, i will trim them when they grow. When I bought them, they are out of the water.

I think after some minor changes, I will add in 5 blue guppies after the water is cycled. This should complete the whole picture.

As for the CO2 part, have decided to go high tech cause of the HC, initially wanted to use Excel. Long term wise should be more ecomical. At the same time, will use this chance to learn to use the system.

I already have picture of my next scape. Hot and dry dessert ! Minimum plants will be used, some dried tree branches and Rams warriors flying around, will save the Excel for this setup