It took me about 2 months to figure out what plants I want in there and how I would like to arrange them. Many ideas were tossed around....
1. started wanting it to be just a bare bottom tank with some Java fern attached to wires. (Rob, thanks for the ferns!) I had Discus fish before, so liked the ease of bare bottom tank. But realize this looks too stupid and ugly for keeping shrimps.
2. Then, decided to put in the gravel. Found nice river rocks at a the garden in school, garbage bagged some home. Saw a great looking stick in neighbor's balcony, knocked on the door, offer to buy it off them, nice neighbor laughed and just gave it to me. Took 4 days to waterlog the stick. It's sinking nicely now. Now, it look like an average Gold fish aquarium.
3. went to a LFS, and purchased some plants. And through private sale online, I found good amount of Christmas moss. Tied half to the stick and sandwich half in wire screens to make little moss tents on the gravel.
4. A couple weeks after 3., some plants didn't do well. I realized it's because we purchased some plants which were grown in CO2 and high light tank at the LFS. They couldn't adjust to my no CO2, no fert, and medium light tank. So, most of them turned brown, rot away. Even though new healthy shoots formed, but the growth is very slow and most of the main plant rot and polluted the tank too much. So, we decided to pull out all the half-dead plants and put in more hardy plants. Here is the final result. I LOVE how green everything looks now.
A list of what I have in there:
- Echinodorus, Red October
- Echinodorus osiris
- Echinodorus amazonicus
- Echinodorus bleheri 'compacta'
- Echinodorus ozelot
- Christmas moss
- Peacock moss
- Windelov
- narrow leaf java fern
- java fern
- water sprite
These are all low demand, fast growing plants. Also are rather algea resistant.
love my tank!
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