Needs Some Ideas For New Tank (pictures Included)

[tenohfive]

This is my Rio 180 community - apologies for the quality of the photo, it was just a quick one using my phone:

Personally I'm a big fan of plain backgrounds - black looks best to my mind. If you are going down the planted route, bear in mind that a bog standard tank by itself won't support many plants - I'm no plant expert, but consider a small CO2 setup (some people make their own to save money), fertilisers and T5 lighting. My tank has T5 and ferts and the plants survive okay, though I need to get the CO2 setup properly sorted if their to flourish.

I'm a big fan of black background, white sand (play sand is ideal and very cheap) with a big central piece of bogwood supported with planting. In the tank above there are two bits of bogwood, and a fake hollow tree/branch thing which came with the tank, and despite my first impressions does look natural to me. And I'm a fan of a couple of small bits of slate sticking out of the sand, works for the riverbed theme.

 

[Honeythorn]

I'm no plant expert, but consider a small CO2 setup (some people make their own to save money), fertilisers and T5 lighting. My tank has T5 and ferts and the plants survive okay, though I need to get the CO2 setup properly sorted if their to flourish.

I don't use any of this in my tanks, and all are under single tube stock lighting. My Aponogentons are always flowering and my Hygrophillia keeps putting out runners ( one of which you can see planted in the foreground of my 12 gallon in the pic I posted ) The water lettuce has to be culled every month or it takes over and I had to completely remove the elodia I used to have bcause it got too much to be doing with . I've never used CO2 or fertilisers in my life!

 

[tenohfive]

I'm no plant expert, but consider a small CO2 setup (some people make their own to save money), fertilisers and T5 lighting. My tank has T5 and ferts and the plants survive okay, though I need to get the CO2 setup properly sorted if their to flourish.

I don't use any of this in my tanks, and all are under single tube stock lighting. My Aponogentons are always flowering and my Hygrophillia keeps putting out runners ( one of which you can see planted in the foreground of my 12 gallon in the pic I posted ) . I've never used CO2 or fertilisers in my life!

To be fair, your tanks aren't exactly heavily planted - but they do look nice. I've had trouble in the past trying to get a well planted tank with standard lighting and no CO2, but its down to how heavy you want the planting to be. It is a fact of life though that if you want a heavily planted tank, you won't get away with bog standard lighting, no ferts and no CO2.

But as I say - I'm not a planting expert. This is just based upon my own experiences.

 

[Truck]

wether you will need CO2 and or ferts or not is all down to lighting!

@honeythorn: im guessing your tank has a 15watt tube for the 12 gallon? so about 1.2WPG which is low light and there isnt any real need for CO2 or ferts

@OP: what lights do you have over your tank?

 

[tenohfive]

wether you will need CO2 and or ferts or not is all down to lighting!

@honeythorn: im guessing your tank has a 15watt tube for the 12 gallon? so about 1.2WPG which is low light and there isnt any real need for CO2 or ferts

@OP: what lights do you have over your tank?

Lol, I've just clicked that the person who's posted a pic of the most sparsely planted tank is the one whos a member of UKAPS. Must be a junior member

j/k truck

 

[Truck]

its a new tank, needs more plants, getting my flow sorted first to avoid algae and then i get more plants

otherwise i buy plants they become algae infested, and then i have some useless plants if the algae really takes hold