Want To Do A Mini Planted Tank

[catxx]

my hex recently had 2 suspicious fish deaths, so i'm tearing it down and starting again. i've only been fishkeeping for a year but i've been learning FAST, this tank has been running for about 11 months.

i want to use sand or some other substrate, i want to take out the gravel as it must be harbouring some kind of fishy diseases, and some baby snails (and it looks old and crap now anyway). i've only ever used pea gravel.

plants in there at the moment are java fern (on a bit of bogwood), amazon sword (newish) and anacharis (and some crap fake-aquatic plant i'm gonna chuck away). no special lighting, its a 7 or an 11 watt, i don't remember. its the Fish R Fun 5 gal hex tank. i'm in london so the water is rock hard (7.5-8 )

there are NO fish in the tank at the moment, but i'll probably want to keep another betta in it, and nothing else.

 

[JArtiles305]

my hex recently had 2 suspicious fish deaths, so i'm tearing it down and starting again. i've only been fishkeeping for a year but i've been learning FAST, this tank has been running for about 11 months.

i want to use sand or some other substrate, i want to take out the gravel as it must be harbouring some kind of fishy diseases, and some baby snails (and it looks old and crap now anyway). i've only ever used pea gravel.

plants in there at the moment are java fern (on a bit of bogwood), amazon sword (newish) and anacharis (and some crap fake-aquatic plant i'm gonna chuck away). no special lighting, its a 7 or an 11 watt, i don't remember. its the Fish R Fun 5 gal hex tank. i'm in london so the water is rock hard (7.5-8 )

there are NO fish in the tank at the moment, but i'll probably want to keep another betta in it, and nothing else.

Don't see a question to answer so...

I'll say good luck, a lot of people have great looking planted "Nano Tanks". I myself have thought of setting up a very low maintance 5G tank with just Anubias, Java Fern, and Java Moss.

I wasn't able to find your tank online, but does it have a filter? If not you'll need regular water changes or be very heavily planted. I also don't know if the lack of water movement will hurt anything. One last thing the Amazon sword is going to outgrow your tank rather quickly and the root system is overpowering.

Regardless, good luck with your project keep us posted. Just remember to keep it fun.

 

[lljdma06]

My suggestion before you seriously begin is to first read the pinned articles at the top of this section. Then, take a look at some of the nano journals in this thread. Nano planted tanks are, in many ways, very similar to nano SW tanks. They are very difficult to get stablelized. They also have limits as to what plants you can select and what fish you can put in it. Do you plan on injecting CO2, what kind of lighting do you want, all these questions effect what kind of plants you can keep in your 5g tank.

Good luck to you, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

llj

 

[catxx]

is there a good pinned topic on here somewhere about getting sand in the tank? never done sand. i'm sure theres one somewhere.

the CO2 thing confuses the hell out of me! it only has a 6w bulb and the lid is so small i doubt i can upgrade it easily, and the filter plugs into the lid so i can't change lids, not easily anyway!

low light easy plants is what i need. i seem to have done well with vallis in my 7 gallon.

edit, this is the tank:
its changed since this pic was taken, and the fishy passed away

 

[goldfish]

If the tank's currently empty of fish then it would be very easy to just take the plants out, remove the gravel and put in some sand. Obviously you've got to be careful about the bacterial impact of this - maybe add a simple bubble filter for a week or so before you switch substrate for the bacteria to colonise, then you shouldn't have any problems (since from that pic you appear to have an inbuilt filter as well), taking the bubble filter out about a week after the substrate change should work.

Those plants you've got in there in that pic seem to be doing well *wonders if they're real*. I'd also recommend anacharis (which you may already have, I'm not entirely sure from the pic), and dwarf anubias - mine, with absolutely no upkeep from me (okay, I did switch the lights on and off every now and then) have quadrupled in size in a year. They're fantastic in low light tanks.

 

[madcaow]

ive got one of the AA EC Hexa 5 tanks like that.

got a single beta in it with an amazon sword some banana lillies and anubias nana. the flouro that comes with it (6w) seems to do the trick.

looks good. once they are setup and u dont need to get into them too much they are pretty easy to take care of.

i dont really do any sort of crazy ferts, just the odd squirt of trace elements. had very little algea, just diatoms which seem to be under control.

 

[catxx]

thanks guys! have got new filter media and need to get some sand (one fish that died had something nasty and internal, the other had dropsy, i dont want to risk infecting new fish i put in there).

in that pic, the java fern, the anachris and the variageted thing is real (chucking the variagated stuff, its some kind of bamboo, not real aquatic and dying now anyway).

the tank is a year old and has done the diatoms thing, but when i clear it out and start again i'll probably get them back again. i have half a million red ramshorn snails, so i'll snag one or two of them to eat algae if need be. (they do a good job in my other tanks)

i saw some anubias nana in a shop and they were asking £15 for a tiny bit of it

 

[madcaow]

yeah some plants arent cheap!

15 pounds is a little rediculous tho, thats like $35aud. i paid $10aud for 2 good sized ones off ebay!