Starving Students 20H tank, 56k warning.

[sil80guy]

This is my 20 gallon tank.
Im currently a college student and trying not to use all my money on my tank , but anyways

I have a 20 gallon tank, filled with plants and fish.
The lights are 2 14w's and 1 15w.
My filtration is a hanging filter that came with the tank, and a Fluval filtration system.
I have tablets for the plants and liquid ferts. trying to round up money for a CO2 system.

I have 10 Neon tetras, 1 Betta, 3 Platies, and 1 Pleco.
Also I have one big snail and a smaller snail that came attached with one of the pants.

The pics right now are about a week old. Im still waiting for my gf to send me the pics of the tank as of now.


FTS


Left shot


Mid shot


Right shot

Tell me what you think, and any help would be very helpful too

[sil80guy]

Here are the recent pics of the tank.

Enjoy!


FTS


Pleco and Tetras


Look at him, hes lazy!


Snail that likes to dig up plants ; ;. sorry that its sideways.

[CL]

nice, very clean, ,i recommend moving the vall towards the back, probably one of the corners

[Ozymandias]

i would suggest looking for a foreground plant other wise the plants look vary good, you might also consider some driftwood (would defiantly be beneficial to the pleco and help make the tank look more natural). Also what substrate are you using and do you know what type of pleco you have. if it's a common pleco it could out grow the tank relatively fast (i have a bristle nose and it keeps around 4" so if you could fin one it might be a good alternative also look in to oto cats if you really want a clean up crew). in general though the tank looks vary clean and vary nice.


(side note typing while tipsy is hard)

[Ozymandias]

just notested but you might want to consider stoking up on more plants mass if it's only week old. this should help with cycling the tank (cut down on ammonia spikes)

[sil80guy]

Originally Posted by clwatkins10

nice, very clean, ,i recommend moving the vall towards the back, probably one of the corners

vall?

Originally Posted by Ozymandias

Also what substrate are you using and do you know what type of pleco you have. if it's a common pleco it could out grow the tank relatively fast (i have a bristle nose and it keeps around 4" so if you could fin one it might be a good alternative also look in to oto cats if you really want a clean up crew).

I use Eco-Complete planted aquarium substrat. and yea i have a common pleco. I plan on sending her back to the lfs when she gets a lil too big for the tank. Also i looked for a suckermouth cat at my lfs but they didnt have the one i was looking for, but ill look for the oto. And I plan on adding drift wood real soon after i figure out where i want it to be.

Thanks for all the comments and help thus far.

[sil80guy]

a quick question how tightly can I plant the plants? i dont want to overcrowd them, currently i have 12 plants.

[BiscuitSlayer]

If you saw my tank, you would think that your tank is sparsly planted.

I have my plants absolutely stuffed into the amount of space I have available.

I planted the taller growing plants in the back, my midground plants in the middle, and my foreground plants in the front. If you plant from tall in the back to short in the front, you will get more depth to the look of your tank.

Also, sloping the substrate from front (low) to back (hi) helps too.

Edit: One more thing that might help the look is to add a dark background of some type so that you don't see cords and the wall behind the tank. Dark colors such as black usually look the best.

[@marko@]

i reccomend just taking your hand and pushing all the plants except that lotus-y thing on the right side, to the back. have most touch the back wall and some in front, touching them. then add more midground plants up against them. add a hardscape there too, stones or driftwood are the most common option. then put in a foreground. you can use moss, riccia, and maybe glosso, or HM, or HC. for glosso and riccia you must have either DIY CO2, or pressurized CO2 in appropriat levels.

its a nice tank, but kinda empty. the plants are doing well though, so it has plenty of potential.

[mgamer20o0]

good start...... though i thought the pic was off at first. the whole substrate getting thicker as i moved my eyes to the right got me for a sec.

[sil80guy]

Originally Posted by BiscuitSlayer

I planted the taller growing plants in the back, my midground plants in the middle, and my foreground plants in the front. If you plant from tall in the back to short in the front, you will get more depth to the look of your tank.

Edit: One more thing that might help the look is to add a dark background of some type so that you don't see cords and the wall behind the tank. Dark colors such as black usually look the best.

Thanks for the back to front idea. The next time im going to the lfs is probably this coming friday, so ill pick up some more taller plants and midground plants. And about the background I was planning on adding black contruction paper to the back, an idea i got from someone elses tank, however i havent gotten around to it yet.

On another note will the thermostat do anothing to the plants if the leaves were touching it?

-@marko@ Ill for sure add somekind of drift wood, most likely in a week.

Originally Posted by mgamer20o0

good start...... though i thought the pic was off at first. the whole substrate getting thicker as i moved my eyes to the right got me

hahaha when my friend came over the other day he said the same thing about how it looked off. I myself however think it looks ok, but ill change it once i get the driftwood and redo my scape.

[sil80guy]

a quick update. i added 6 ghost shrimp and 2 panda cats, the lfs i went to didnt tell me they should be kept in a group of 6 so i plan on getting 2 more next week and 2 more the week after. I bought a moonlight and 2 drift woods.

i didnt realize it would be so hard to get the driftwood in the tank, i had to take everything out just to put the wood in there so it wouldnt float up. the wood is releasing some bubbles hopefully they are just oxygen bubbles that got stuck when i put it in there.

on an interesting note my platies produced eggs, and i found 1 fry swimming and hiding in my plants hopefully it survives, i dont plan on trying to safe the frys.

its a bit cloudy so ill add more pics in a week when my gf comes back over to take pictures of the tank.

[Ozymandias]

for the drift wood you might try boiling it a little bit that should help with buoyancy and help with removing tanis

[sil80guy]

boiling the drift wood worked wonders and the after water turned a dark brown so hopefully all of the tanis is gone.

heres some recent pictures of the tank that i took with my camera phone.

fts


left shot


right shot


trying to make the tank look more scenic now then having everything just placed where ever.

any tips on placement would be really helpful. but i like the water sprite in the front. its the java fern on the left that i dont know what to do about.

[Ozymandias]

Looks good you ever consider a nice low ground cover for the exposed areas. for the jave fern you might try tying it to the drift wood