New tank and fish, what to get for him next?

[oodLes]

Hi all, great community here from reading some other threads.

I've recently got myself a red betta now named Sen, a 3.5 Gallon tank, a heater and some water conditioner and betta specific food so hes all set health wise, however I previously had him in a smaller maybe 1.5gallon tank that was fine with the prior decorations I had in there, but in his new 3.5gallon cube its not gonna work, so now I can decorate like crazy!

I've been looking at the pics of other peoples tanks and some of them look really good, and I wondered about planted greenery, does this remove the unwanted defecations from the fish completely or do you still have to change the water in the tank every week etc.

Also, do you guys clean the entire tank weekly? This seems like a massive effort to take the tank off its stand, remove all the furnishings inside and wash them all before putting it back again. I have absolutely no problem doing this, don't get me wrong, I just found it like a lot of work, although I guess washing the dog every week takes more time.

Anyway, whos got some ideas for decorating a large square tank from scratch?

[ElmoFish]

I don't really have a lot of decorating ideas, but terra cotta pots make cute caves, if you like the natural look, and live plants do help with the waste, but you still need to do partial water changes. Whether or not you completely wash everything in your tank, and change all the water, or do partial water changes depends on whether you "cycle" your tank. As I don't really want to explain the entire nitrogen cycle and how to go about this, try googling "the nitrogen cycle" and you should get some good information. It's basically the build up of beneficial bacteria that take care of the harmful chemicals in your tank, so that you don't have to do complete changes. Hope this helps, and good luck with your new little guy!

[kelly528]

Plant it plant it plant it! It's pretty fun and people get quite 'into' it. With a bit of research on some planted forums you should be able to choose a scheme requiring any level of difficulty you want to take on. You can look up 'nano planted tank' to get tons of ideas and inspiration.

[Vikki81207]

If you go on my site, yearleybettas I have a list of things for bettas that you should get. The link is in my signature if you wanna check it out.

[oodLes]

Thanks Vikki. :)

I kinda got so excited about how to decorate his tank etc that I might have already done so lol, thread is here: http://www.bettafish.com/showthread.php?t=29498