Well, not complete beginner. Not to fishkeeping at least!
Hello! My name is Gary Hudston and I am currently a poor University Student who has decided, astonishingly, that a planted aquarium is the best use for all his spare pennies!
I have been keeping fish for most of my life, and when I wasn't keeping them I was totally obsessed with my older brothers aquarium. I have had a number of community aquariums, which eventually led to my first experience with fish breeding (Guppies, naturally). I was then hooked, eventually moving on to a small scale Betta breeding programme in my bedroom. When this became too much for me I decided to pack it in until I was able to set up a drip filter system, a project which is still on the back burner until after university, and moved on to keeping a pair of oscars which unfortunately died 6 months ago.
Having no fish at all was slowly starting to get to me and so I decided to scale it back a bit and keep a simple community aquarium to tide me over until I was in a better position to resume breeding bettas. If any of you knew me, you would know that I cannot do anything by halves and during my initial research and planning my simple community tank balooned into a desire to create a lush planted aquascape!
Planted aquariums are somethng that I have not ever tried before besides buying some poor quality plants from various pet shops, throwing them into a tank with my fish and watching them slowly disintegrate. This time I hope to do it properly!
I have had a tank sat on a sturdy desk next to my work space for a couple of weeks now and it is slowly beginning to take shape.
I first put in three bags of flourite black sand (and one bag of flourite black, as I couldn't find more than three bags of the sand!), here it is in the tank:
Next came the hardscape, sourced from Aquaessentials.co.uk (who are brilliant.). Mini Landscape Rocks and Redmoor Wood:
I even got a piece that reminds me of an Easter Island head!
I had some difficulty getting the pieces to fit in the tank how I had planned it out, so I had to think outside of the box and eventually combined all three pieces of wood into a single tree root. You have to be sat on my desk to be able to see the join, which will be hidden further when it is planted. Also notice some HC in the process of being planted, it's like performing neuro surgery!
And here it is with the finished carpet. Note that from the angle that I will view the tank you cannot really see the top of the root, giving the impression that it continues out of the tank. I want to hide the part where the root has been cut with some moss or other plants that I can attach once the tank is filled:
I am going to grow the HC emmersed until I can afford CO2 injection (should be able to order it in a few weeks time, but I may still let the HC grow more before flooding. I'll see how it goes!):
And finally, me getting a bit more creative with camera angles:
That's it for now. I'm excited to see how the HC grows on from here; it's been in there now for about 3 days and it's still nice and green so I have reasonable hopes for it. This is the first time that I have decorated a fish tank more than just adding gravel, a piece of wood/some rocks and some plastic plants (or short lived live ones!), so please let me know what you think!
Cheers!
Hello! My name is Gary Hudston and I am currently a poor University Student who has decided, astonishingly, that a planted aquarium is the best use for all his spare pennies!
I have been keeping fish for most of my life, and when I wasn't keeping them I was totally obsessed with my older brothers aquarium. I have had a number of community aquariums, which eventually led to my first experience with fish breeding (Guppies, naturally). I was then hooked, eventually moving on to a small scale Betta breeding programme in my bedroom. When this became too much for me I decided to pack it in until I was able to set up a drip filter system, a project which is still on the back burner until after university, and moved on to keeping a pair of oscars which unfortunately died 6 months ago.
Having no fish at all was slowly starting to get to me and so I decided to scale it back a bit and keep a simple community aquarium to tide me over until I was in a better position to resume breeding bettas. If any of you knew me, you would know that I cannot do anything by halves and during my initial research and planning my simple community tank balooned into a desire to create a lush planted aquascape!
Planted aquariums are somethng that I have not ever tried before besides buying some poor quality plants from various pet shops, throwing them into a tank with my fish and watching them slowly disintegrate. This time I hope to do it properly!
I have had a tank sat on a sturdy desk next to my work space for a couple of weeks now and it is slowly beginning to take shape.
I first put in three bags of flourite black sand (and one bag of flourite black, as I couldn't find more than three bags of the sand!), here it is in the tank:
Next came the hardscape, sourced from Aquaessentials.co.uk (who are brilliant.). Mini Landscape Rocks and Redmoor Wood:
I even got a piece that reminds me of an Easter Island head!
I had some difficulty getting the pieces to fit in the tank how I had planned it out, so I had to think outside of the box and eventually combined all three pieces of wood into a single tree root. You have to be sat on my desk to be able to see the join, which will be hidden further when it is planted. Also notice some HC in the process of being planted, it's like performing neuro surgery!
And here it is with the finished carpet. Note that from the angle that I will view the tank you cannot really see the top of the root, giving the impression that it continues out of the tank. I want to hide the part where the root has been cut with some moss or other plants that I can attach once the tank is filled:
I am going to grow the HC emmersed until I can afford CO2 injection (should be able to order it in a few weeks time, but I may still let the HC grow more before flooding. I'll see how it goes!):
And finally, me getting a bit more creative with camera angles:
That's it for now. I'm excited to see how the HC grows on from here; it's been in there now for about 3 days and it's still nice and green so I have reasonable hopes for it. This is the first time that I have decorated a fish tank more than just adding gravel, a piece of wood/some rocks and some plastic plants (or short lived live ones!), so please let me know what you think!
Cheers!