[pseudomonas]

I've had this tank for a couple of months now. I had been out of the hobby for years (used to do mostly SW) but I wanted to get back into it and the Aqueon Minibow was an easy sell to the spouse. I struggled with aquascaping it until I realized that anubias grows quite well even under the weak light and found this amazing (albeit probably too large for the tank) driftwood. I picked up a couple more anubias today and put it all back together.

This is a five gallon aqueon minibow with stock pretty much everything. Sorry for the potato quality pics but hopefully you folks like it and please let me know if you have any suggestions! Oh, it's barely visible in the pictures but the white thing behind the driftwood is a bag of filter media I'm seeding for my new 20 long! Just ignore it please.

Flora
-Various anubias: nana, barteri, petitie, and an unlabeled one I think is minima
-Java moss
-Val and wisteria in the back- going to take those out as soon as my 20 is set up. They're doing ok in the light but will probably do a lot better with the sat+ I'm getting and they really make the back look cluttered.

Fauna
1 betta named Duffy- not sure how visible it is in the pics but yes I do know he has mild fin rot- came from the store like that and I'm treating with salt
2 cherry shrimp- I want to get more but they're kind of spendy at my LFS so I'm waiting to see if these two will make me some babies first. One is for sure a female, the other I'm not sure, can't see a saddle but it's darker in color.

Ok on to the pics...

FTS with Duff photobombing

Closer...

Too close!! No, I just love this anubias petite I picked up today. Er, ignore the fishing line. It's not there. You're seeing things.

 

[kman]

Nice! Hope your betta doesn't develop a taste for little shrimp...

 

[pseudomonas]

Nice! Hope your betta doesn't develop a taste for little shrimp...

I like to think that if he was going to, he would have by now- they've all been in there together for at least a month. He had ample chances even just today while I was rescaping and had them all in a quart jar together.

Those buggers are fast! They're hiding now probably because it's all different than they're used to, but normally they buzz around the tank constantly. Everyone loves them.

 

[knm<><]

Get ready for painfully slow growth. If you can wait it out though, nothing beats anubias IMO. They are beautiful when they get big and bushy, especially the petite variety.

 

[pseudomonas]

They're slow but steady for sure.

I now have a 20 L I'm setting up to be a low tech planted with more fast growing plants. I like the look of anubias a lot but yeah if I didn't have this other tank to fiddle with I'd probably get impatient.

On a side note, I picked up some purigen last night because the driftwood was still leeching tannins despite many hours of boiling and oh my goodness, that stuff works. It's clearer than it even was before I put the driftwood in.

 

[pseudomonas]

More pics from this morning:

Duffy's colors are unreal:

Out of focus shrimp:

As of this morning both shrimp are saddled so I guess I'll have to get a few more if I want babies. My husband asked me, "what if Duffy eats the babies?" I told him, "free food!"

I take a real cycle-of-life approach to childrearing apparently. Probably for the best I have no kids.

 

[crazy4fids]

I think it looks great! All you need now is a black background to set it all off! Your betta is beautiful!