Planted tanks suck!

[aychamo]

Argh I hate that I'm a planted tank guy!

I'd like to setup a couple of other small tanks, but I feel like I could never do a tank now with artificial plants. So that means I have to buy substrate, CO2, lighting, etc for other tanks. Maybe I could do the smaller tanks with just easy plants that wouldnt need CO2. ... I dunno

[Overfloater]

Haha.. of course you need live plants now. It's a given. For an easy "no frills" tank I recommend Java Fern

[anonapersona]

your second tank will probably be a standard planted tank, then the Q tank gets lightly planted. Eventually another tank appears, and if you are the limit of maintainence time, it may or may not get planted.

You might try a tank of shell dwellers, or cichlids with a pile of rocks and minimal plants, or a lot of planted dirftwood on sand. I'm finding the narrow leaf java fern does beautifully with standard tank lights and no CO2, limited ferts (got algae when I dosed ferts so I don't know how limited I need, maybe none!).

I think eventually one branches out into different sorts of tanks, after exploring a lot of the planted tank world. I have one tank of big cichlids (rocks and plastic plants), one bare bottom tank of discus (no decoration at all but fish), three planted tanks with Flourite and CO2, two wood and fern tanks.

[meee]

i agree, get a cichlid tank!! (sorry, im still more of a cichlid guy than a planted guy). but yeah, how small are the tanks gonna be? u can actually get some small shell dwellers that will work in as small as a ten gallon tank (u could only house two though...and make sure they're not both male, or they will tear each other apart, at least that's wat happened to me). check out cichlid-forum.com for more information, they can help u a lot more than i can. o well, good luck, hope all goes well.

[FMZ]

Or you can get a Bolivian or German Blue Ram. They're great in planted tank IMHO.

[fedge]

Yah.. i started ONE planted tank.. now all the tanks are being taken over by plants. I just can't seem to throw out the cuttings!!!! Planted tank with blue neon gravel...!!!!

[nillo]

Hey Aychamo, try doing a cool small tank with the PU Foam. You could do a little low tech soil substrate. Make a pendant that uses spiral PC's. I should have some pics of the pendant I made soon. I'll make sure to post them.