Planted 6.6 Journal

[leahleigh]

Woo, so I had my "tester tank" with my 5 gallon and it made me decide to try to get in deeper with the planted tank world. This is going to be the journal of my transition and everything i've learned. It's more for me than for the community, i'd just like to have a place to keep track of everything. :)

Before #1:
Don't have picture, but started out with pea-sized gravel, perhaps a little bigger. It didn't look very good, and my plants wouldn't stay put. It was hard to clean and overall just didn't do the tank justice or give me the feel I wanted.

Before #2:

This is the gravel switch and simple plants added. 2x Anubias, Java Fern, Java Moss, Drift Wood, Lucky Bamboo. (P.S. please don't comment on the bamboo, i know it's not full-time aquatic)

After! I bought this tank off of LittleWatty. :)

I built a shelf specifically for this tank, plywood and cinder blocks! It actually looks pretty good. Found the drift wood we had left over from the gold fish tank, something I could NEVER find until now? Tied the large Anubias to the small piece of drift wood, and anchored my very poor looking Java Fern to the hole in the large drift wood. This is what i'm going to be considering the "before" of my planted tank. It'll probably be complete rearranged and a TON more plants added. I plan on putting a small carpet of moss in there, duckweed in the top right, some type of long grassy type in the back right. Oh yeah, and buy a better light bulb.

[Agility4fun]

Neat!! I look forward to following your progress.

[aokashi]

looks good ^_^I'm gonna stalk your tank :D

[valen1014]

Looks awesome!! Careful with the bamboo possibly rotting (I'm not how far up out of the water they have to be) and make sure that jagged end of the opening of the clay pot isn't sharp or the fishes might get cut. I love the black substrate! It just makes everything else stand out so well =]

[leahleigh]

Oh yeah, I know! It's survived 6+ months and the others that I took out and "properly" planted ended up dying. The edge on the pot isn't sharp enough to cut him, and only the snail goes into it anyway. ;)

[leahleigh]

And thanks guys! I look forward to it's progress. ;)

[soady]

How to keep a bamboo plant properly:

[leahleigh]

I'm aware of that, and that's how I planted them, as you see above it says I did it properly.

I also asked for people to not comment on the bamboo, so if you guys could refrain from doing so in this thread, send me a PM or something! n_n

Thanks. <3

[aokashi]

The 6.6 has so much potential, what other plabts are you going to put in there?

One more thing about bamboos that I hope will be permitted ;)
Personally I don't like how bamboo looks in planted tanks XD, Only once did I see a bamboo tank I thought was cool. It was this zen themed tank planted with lots and lots of bamboo, like a bamboo forest :D.

[leahleigh]

I know, I saw an all bamboo forest planted tank and it was sooo cool. I only keep it in there because my mother's oscars tear them up and Dimitri likes rubbing against it.

UHM, I have a list here, and here are most hopefuls that will be eventually and not right away. I found someone in the town over who has some plants for sale maybe, but if not i'll just check into petco/petsmart when they have new shipments of plants. I don't have a local fish store. ;n;

Hornwort, Banana Plant (i love them!), Hairgrass, Cobomba c. (not too sure, but i liked the looks of it), I really want some Dwarf Sagittaria and some moss to put in the back under the drift wood. I realllllly want some branch wood but I can't find any of it long/squat enough. I might get one and trim it down a bit. I have a very specific look with a very low budget. c; But isn't that how we all start out?