• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Betta Adventures

Smells Fishy

Member
Joined
25 Oct 2015
Messages
474
Location
Scarbourgh, UK
It's finally happening, seems like this idea came out of nowhere, in fact the idea started to form in my head after reading the Charlie Chi journal. That gave me the nano bug. My inspiration is centered around how this journal turned out https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/nano-riparium-formerly-betta-biotope.10598/. One real draw to doing a riparium is that I get to mix 2 of my hobbies together, fish keeping and house plants. One of my other hobbies I get to incorporate in to this scape is beachcombing. I've been collecting a particular kind of rock for a few years now from massive (like wtf would you carry that all the way back from the beach!) to big and small so it's going to be used for sure. All ready for some picked out.

For those of you who don't know I did do another journal over a year ago. At the time I was a hardcore fancy goldfish keeper, paranoid about SBD so I soaked my pellets before feeding, used a goldfish forum etc. I got to the stage I tried out a planted tank with them. It wasn't anything fancy like with a planted substrate just a decent amount of plants and character fish + 1 snail. That's what the journal entailed. In the end I got fed up of every few days getting my hands in the tank to remove the munched on parts of the plants. I must have wasted about £30-£40 on cabomba and elodea, even with all the cuttings I would take it wasn't enough to keep up with making the tank look nice all the time. It would look good for a few days at most before the fish took back control of the tank layout. Even my "bulletproof" Anubias plants had holes and rips on there leaves. I stopped wasting my money on ferts and plants and ended that chapter in fishkeeping for me. This was around the time my life was turned upside down by having my newborn to look after, so I'm sure you can understand why I gave up. There's someone on here who showed off his amazingly planted fancy goldfish tank and I'm adamant it only looked that way for the pictures. I would go as far to say that maintaining a nice planted tank with goldfish is impossible long term, unless you like seeing your plants torn to bits and constantly rearranging your scape.

I'm pretty embarrassed that I even attempted such a thing and that it was one of my only contributions to this site where I actually showed something off. Wish I just did what a lot of you do, come in newly registered with Ada tank, co2, the works. Well I haven't got the money for that set up, I'm stint most of the time so not my style man. Here's what I'm packing.

Fauna - more on that later
Tank - Dennerle Nano 30L
Substrate - Tropica Aquarium Soil
Ferts - undecided
Co2 - Dennerle Nano Carbon Elixir Bio
Light - Aquael Leddy Smart Plant
Heater - Aquael Easy Heater 25w
Filtration - Aquael VersaMax FZN1

Plant List
All I'm saying is crypts, to be continued:p

It's pay day tomorrow so a chunk of the list will be ticked off.

Like the title says this is going to be a real adventure, especially for me.

Cheers.
 
Last edited:
Just placed an order with pro-shrimp. Bought the tank and other goodies so I'll upload some pics of what I got when it comes. Might make a post messing around with the rocks next depends when the delivery comes for what happens first.
 
Quick update.

IMG_20170614_151525254.jpg
 
It's all coming together...won't be long now;)

Yeah hopefully. Shouldn't be too long till the equipment is sorted, a couple of weeks maybe and then I'm done with crappy set up mode, been there done that a few times, just want to get this part over with. Then the adventure can begin.
 
Looking forward to this, especially the riparium part. Always on the lookout for new species to try above the water.
 
Been thinking about making this into a double tank journal because I still haven't done anything with my new Aqua Aspire 130. It'll make this journal more interesting and both of the tanks have curved front corners, glass top covers and black backgrounds so will complement each other well.

IMG_20170617_150239630.jpg
 
Last edited:
Tried a couple of mock ups and have settled on this one for now. Thought I would come here for some feed back. What do you think?

IMG_20170617_212757749.jpg
 
Are these the rocks from the beach fishy? I like them and the placement too :)

Yeah these are the beach rocks I was on about. I have a ton more but couldn't find any that where the right size or weren't too rounded. I'm going to play around with the scape a bit more and go to the beach again to see if I can find something with these sort of edges. I like it but only 90%. I'm going to cut some more polystyrene and raise the top rock up to see what more height looks like.
 
Beware of buoyancy of polystyrene.rather use more stonnes that will be covered.
I'd add some more height, but I'm not sure what your plans are for riparium and if you plan to fill the tank with water completly.
 
Beware of buoyancy of polystyrene.rather use more stonnes that will be covered.
I'd add some more height, but I'm not sure what your plans are for riparium and if you plan to fill the tank with water completly.

I did occur to me that the polystyrene will float, I've seen it floating in the sea before. I'll dig some ditches in the polystyrene and wedge some rocks into it, it should work since there's substrate going over it as well.

I haven't thought to much about the riparium part of the tank. I know I want some potted plants behind the tank to give it a canopy feel, don't know what ones yet tho. For the HOB I'm going to try grow something emersed out of it, not sure on that yet either. I'll need to get the glass cover cut to accommodate the HOB first. I'm going to fill the tank up as far as I can because with everything inside the tank the water volume is probably going to be 20L or less. I'm using the glass top cover because the Betta I'm getting is not a standard £5 LFS one, it's coming from LJB aquatics so is going to cost me around £30. I don't want it jumping out the tank so the hanging basket type riparium probably won't happen in unless some of the aquatic plants grow in really well and start to grow emersed.
 
Check your polystyrene stability before you add substrate - makes a memorable mess when it rises from the depths :eek:

Small pebbles, lava rocks etc in a nylon bag (stockings) is a much more predictable/stable "riser"
 
Take two.

IMG_20170622_200258318.jpg


IMG_20170622_200444328.jpg


So I stacked a couple more pieces of polystyrene for the height that was lacking before and sanded all the pieces down. I'm a bit worried about the substrate at the back being about 5 inches deep because I vaguely remember that problems can occur with bacteria or something due to no oxygen or water movement, I don't know. I looked at the journal 'Hanging Rock' on here a few days ago and the members substrate looked deeper than mine at the back. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? And I'm beginning to think 3L of substrate won't be enough.

@alto
I mainly chose to use the polystyrene as it was free with the tank. No danger tho because it's going to be seriously embedded with rocks to keep it in place.
 
Back
Top