120L Tank, Need Some Inspiration!

[justjon]

Hi all,
 
It's been a fair while since I visited, but I'm in a bit of need as far as my tank goes.. I'm a bit bored with it at the moment and need to make it look a LOT more "wow!"
 
At the moment, I have two standard T5 lights, but I feel the look of the tank is quite "yellow" and not very eye catching, it has black sand in and a few pebbles/a rock sculpture. I've got no plants at current because a few of the live ones i've purchased didn't do too well, so I was considering going for silk.
 
As for the fish, they are all a well-progressed and long-lived bunch, 5 neon tetra's and 1 glowlight (left from my old bunch a few years ago, he just keeps going and seems to hang about with the neons happily enough).
 
A silver gourami, an orange platy, an assasin snail and about 7 amano shrimp.
 
That's it at the moment.. so fish ideas would be welcome as to what I could do with it.
 
I'm wanting to make a switch back from sand I think, apart from the fact it's not really black looking anymore (more of a grey), it's also caused scratches to the front of the tank when cleaning.. so I'm going to have to switch the tank back to front (or attempt to) at some point.
 
It's a JUWEL Tank.
 
Any ideas, tips, reccomendations for good looking setups or examples of what I could do with this sort of size would be appreciated!

 

[haleem8777]

you could have a better selection of fish like two or three schools of tetra and some center piece fish like gourami. To improve the tank the lights you have should be OK. i cant say exactly what setup if you want to start again just watch some videos on you-tube and after watching a few you will come up with a tank idea and go from there.If i had your tank i would have a nice piece of red more wood surrounded with some rocks.

 

[TooManyChoices]

You definitely don't make it sound like the nicest tank

If it were me. Complete overhaul. Remove all fish, substrate, lighting etc.

Personally I love plain sand as a substrate and it seems to benefit most fish (digging and feeding). The lighting, replace with one 10,000 kelvin white tube and one in the slightly red spectrum. Far better for plants and viewing. Plants. IMO harder to keep than fish! Go for some low tech plants that don't need a nutrient rich substrate, I.e. anubias, java fern, bolbitis. These can all be tied onto nice branching pieces of drift wood!

As far as fish goes. I have something against keepi f fish from different continents together. In fact. I hate it and it makes me want to go on a killing spree... But that's just me. So I would go for either:

South America set up:
- a pair of Bolivian rams
- 15 cardinal tetras
- corydoras ( which ever species you like)

Asian set up:
- pair of pearl gourami
-15 cherry barbs (or none nippy barb/danio of your choice)
-kuhlii loaches (6 or so)

Central American tank:
- group of swordtails, nice natural green ones if you can find them
- pair of rainbow cichlids
-for decor. Just rocks, maybe a big piece of granite rock with lots of smaller pieces around it along the bottom, some small branchy pieces of wood and some hornwort floating around the surface.

Fish tend to look better when there's more of a few species than 1 or 2 of heaps of species.
The set ups I prefer are more natural looking, it's just what appeals to me. This is my current tank:
Water is a bit cloudy as I'd just rescaped it:

Used to be this: