20 Gal Upgrade

[iroc]

When I 1st got my tank it came with some fake plants, fake drift wood and a skull bubble maker, I added (seems silly now) a coral background pic

then I took out the plastic plants and put in some real ones ( still kept that back ground and that skull thing though)

So just a couple of days ago, I got some new plants, a real piece of driftwood and a new blue background. I drilled a big hole in the drift wood and then some small holes on top and used that to replace the skull, I also got some lighter colered gravel to mix with the dark stuff to give it a better look

I'm learning hopefully things will just keep getting better

 

[treacles]

hi very nice

 

[sparky_555]

Nice improvement from the start, keep it up

 

[TigerMan]

looks alot nicer

 

[Gankutsuou]

Now just change the gravel, and get natural gravel and sand..... and it'll look perfect...


Love the water wisteria. Tis my fav.

 

[Neal]

Hope you were after advice/criticism.
1) Change to sand, or black gravel. If I was you i'd go for Tahaitan Moon Sand, but it's about £20 for a bag of it. Or just get playsand for about £3.
2) Move the tall plants to the back of the tank, this will give better sense of depth and will hopefully hide some equiptment.
3) Personally I prefer black backgrounds to blue, as it helps blend in the equiptment, but that's personal preferance.
4) Move the thermometer to the back corner of the tank, so it's only visible from the side when you want to see it.
5) Turn off the airstone thing, will make the plant look much more natural. Also, I think you should just get one nice big bit of driftwood, and have that as a centrepeice, with all different plants, of different sizes, leaf structure and colours. Also a nice carpet of riccia will do wonders, or if not riccia, then java moss.

Sorry for the criticism, i'm just helping to make your tank look more natural, if that's what your looking for.

Neal

 

[iroc]

Hope you were after advice/criticism.
1) Change to sand, or black gravel. If I was you i'd go for Tahaitan Moon Sand, but it's about £20 for a bag of it. Or just get playsand for about £3.
2) Move the tall plants to the back of the tank, this will give better sense of depth and will hopefully hide some equiptment.
3) Personally I prefer black backgrounds to blue, as it helps blend in the equiptment, but that's personal preferance.
4) Move the thermometer to the back corner of the tank, so it's only visible from the side when you want to see it.
5) Turn off the airstone thing, will make the plant look much more natural. Also, I think you should just get one nice big bit of driftwood, and have that as a centrepeice, with all different plants, of different sizes, leaf structure and colours. Also a nice carpet of riccia will do wonders, or if not riccia, then java moss.

Sorry for the criticism, i'm just helping to make your tank look more natural, if that's what your looking for.

Neal

thank you very much, as far as the gravel goes your very right I bought it when I had no idea what it would all look like together and some day i will replace it

the plants aside from the amozon sword and the water onion are doing really badly, mostly becuase the lfs sold them to me as low light level plants and they are not, the black backgreound is the other side of the blue one I have now, I think if I take some of your advice about moving things around then the black background would be really nice.....unfortantely for me I have lost a lot of fish becuase I didn't have any idea what I was doing when i started but I think I will be doing a major overhaul soon.

 

[nathan01]

hi looks really nice

 

[howling_greywolf]

wish I could buy live plants :3 there way to exspensive here, like 20$ a plant! Makes me sad, my tank is full of fake plants XD

 

[Tsi_User]

I've had no problems keeping Camboba, Hornwort, Dwarf Sag and Corkscrew Val in my low light planted tank.

Just a suggestion

 

[iroc]

I have just come into some unexpected cash and I think I am gonna do an upgrade of the gravel and move some of the plants around in the process only question I have about the gravel Vs sand is how do the live plants thrive in it. I am also gonna turn my blue background to the other side and make it black. When doing a complete tank change up should I remove everything including all the water?

 

[iroc]

Thanks for the advice ppl I think the fish will thank you to



after last nights upgrade

Thanks for the advice ppl I think the fish will thank you to



after last nights upgrade

 

[cane76]

great improvment looks so much better i had the same marine background and blue gravel on one of my first attempts what was i thinking.

 

[iroc]

I am actually happy with the tank now, and the thing is the fish took to this new set up very fast they all seem to be enjoying the open area in the middle of the tank, thanks neal for all the great seggustions