New Setup for My Soon to be New Guy

[Oduelz]

Just setup my new 6.6 gallon bookshelf from petco. This is my first ever attempt at a planted setup, hopefully once it starts to grow it will fill in a little, and most importantly, hopefully it will make its soon to be inhabitant, a sole betta, very happy!

[TheDragon]

I love it. I can't wait it see it grow. What plants did you use and what is your substrate?

[Creat]

I absolutely love the bookshelf aquariums very nice and it should grow in very well :)

[Oduelz]

For substrate I am using petco black sand; its pretty large, not very fine, and I read around on some forums that it makes decent substrate for plants.

The plants that are in there include: Amazon sword in the front left, left is a money wort, rear left is some sword of broad leafed plant (can't remember atm,) center is anubia grown on driftwood, to the right of that is java fern. Front right im not sure, as I did not intend to buy it, when I was getting the java fern the clerk kind of grabbed both of them so its kind of like a bonus lol. And the far right is egeria densa. All of them are fairly easy to grow from what I read and should be good for a beginner such as myself im hoping :D

They have been fertilized with root tabs, and also one dose of aqueon plant food. So I am hoping to see some nice growth over the next month!

Once my angelplus active sponge filter comes in the tank will run for a couple days to get its cycle and then it will be home to i'm hoping a half moon plakat :)

And I also love the bookshelfs, I think they're perfect for bettas not to deep and lots of swimming room!

[Greylady]

I also have a bookshelf tank and love it! It's the perfect betta tank when you don't have a lot of room. It gives the betta lots of horizontal swimming room and also gives you more room for plants then a deeper tank. There is a pic of mine in my album. I'm also new (about 3 months) to planted tanks and have been doing a lot of reading about them. Good luck! It looks great so far!

[NyaNyanNaa]

Lovely set up! despite there being sand it doesn't look cloudy at all.

[Oduelz]

Greylady I just checked out your tank and it is stunning! I can't wait to see mine grow in; how long did it take before you saw significant growth on your plants? And what kind of ferts are you or were you using?

And Nya it was only cloudy initially but after a little while it cleared right up :D

[Greylady]

Thanks Odulez! I haven't used any ferts yet. The small bushy plants in the front are Cryptocryne Wendtii and will have been in the tank 2 weeks tomorrow. Same for the ones in the back right corner, which on the package said it was an "El Nino Fern". The Crypt has spread out or "fluffed up" since I put it in the tank but I don't really see a lot of new growth yet. It came in a bunch with 4 separate plants that I spread out. . The Fern has grown a lot. It also came in a bunch with 4 separate stems also which I planted in a line. It's probably doubled in size and number of leaves and filled out quite a bit.