Aquascaping help....

[enchanted]

Okay, have a little problem and after reading all the posts with other people asking it just looked like a good place for help.

First, I'm not even sure I have all plants planted "correctly" as my LFS was closed and I forgot the names of what I bought.

Any advice help would be good.

 

[tear-scar]

The plant you have in the middle is some kind of echinoderus sp., in other words a sword. Too cloudy and small for me to tell about the others, can you take close up photos?

As for aquascaping:

Fish choices:

Take into accout what fish you're planning on keeping before choosing plants. Most tanks will have some algae eating fish, normally a swarm of ottos or a school of SAE. Anothe good idea is to have fish like kuhli loaches, horse face loach, or corydoras sp. to shuffle through your tank and release detritus from your plants and substrate.

If you're really going for plants, you're pretty much limited to:
SMALL characins (basically, tetras, pencilfish and hatchet fish)
SMALL cyprinids (rasboras, danios, white cloud minnows, POSSIBLY barbs, but they're more risky)
Rainbow Fish
Live Bearer fish (molly, platy, guppies, etc.)
Gouramis (keep in large groups to avoid territorial aggression)
Betta (Obviously only 1 male per tank, don't keep with gouramis)
SMALL south american cichlids (Appistograma species, possibly rams; like african cichlids they need lots of hiding places to establish territory and minimize territorial aggression)
Angel Fish (They WILL eat any very small rasboras or tetras)
Discus (Think VERY carefully . . .) (They might very well eat any very small rasboras or tetras)


Angels and Discuss like tall vertical plants like vallies . . . Gouramies really like feather plants like cabomba . . .

Gouramies, betta, live bearers, and hatchets all realy like floating plants too, but not necessary.


Aquascapes generaly have fore-ground, mid-ground, and back ground. For instance, in my tank, you would say the Java moss is the foreground, the hair-grass and micranthemum makes up the mid ground as well as the wood planted with anubia, and the vallisneria make up the back ground.

Choose plants accordingly to fit each area, choose lighting and positioning to soot them. As a hint, crypts are the easiest foreground plants. I would use them myself, but in a small 10g, crypts end up looking way to big for foreground . . .

 

[enchanted]

I actually have some close ups.

This is going to be a community tank. It currently has some guppies, Danios, Cory, and 1 common Pleco. It's a 55G. I want a few larger fish, but haven't decided what yet.....

I do know what the rest are. The large one is a sword, the little one to the left is a Micro Sword, the little one next to the rocks on the right is a shoot from the large sword, the tall ones in the back right are Jungle Vale, and the tallest one in the back left is Voriegated Acorus.

 

[tear-scar]

Feathery leaved ones are probably green cabomba. The plant in the second pic is another type of echinoderus. Can't recognize the others off the top of my head sadly.

Great fish, save danios like fast moving water, and not a lot of plants really tolerate that. Not really that big a deal though, the danios should be ok in less current.

As for big fish, like I said, look at the list above. Gouramis and angels are best bets probably; dwarf SA cichlids are bigger than your other fish . . . though still pretty small . . . Most bigger fish:

a) eat plants
B) move plants to their liking and end up shredding them
c) are simply clumsy oafs who run over plants by accident

Since you have a plec (which poo a lot) it's even more important to have a big school of cories to make sure the poo doesn't get stuck in the plants!! Use this as an excuse to get more cories!!!

 

[enchanted]

I wanted 4 Panda Corys, but that would have upped the total past my wallet.

As is I spent more than i should have today....

I really want some clown loaches. My LFS said he can get me some that are like 1 to 1.5" (basically not even out of their toddler years. )

I will have to research some of the bigger fish. The bottom tank is going to be a Discus tank.

 

[enchanted]

Giant Hygro
Ozelot Sword
Cabomba (green and red)

That is what the plants came out to.

I ended up taking the advice and moving the sword. Now I'm just going to remove it.

Here is how it looks now.

 

[konrad05]

1. add a background to the tank
2. get some hygrophilia plants to take care for the back ground
3. give the plants time to grow!

 

[enchanted]

1. Background on order from Bigals Scheduled Delivery 10/05/04. Midnight Ocean Blue (black basically) and Ocean Blue.

2. I rearranged. Waiting for silt to settle. But I have
Tropic Sunset (Hygro)
Giant Hygro
Primrose

as the background.

3. I wish they would grow faster.

I also have Java Fern and Java Moss coming for more of a center plant. I removed the ozelot. It was in bad shape, although I really liked the look of it. The roots had were starting to rot. I also have c. Lucens coming for inbetween the driftwood and the rocks and anubias nana for more foreground cover.