Planted Aquariums

[perrywing]

Does anyone else's plant hobby spill over into aquariums and fishkeeping? 

I've had a fish tank for longer than I can remember and only recently (the last year or so) tried my hand at keeping live aquatic plants in my aquarium.

Here's my current 10 gallon:



Nothing special, but it was only a side-project and I honestly don't put too much care or effort into it, haha.

The light is a typical 5400k grow light I use for my non-aquatic plants. I have a small paintball co2 setup and an internal filter (that I rarely clean - oops). Honestly I have no idea the types of plants I have in there, other than the java ferns and some type of grass (I am far, far away from a proper aquarium store and the petstore employees know less about these plants than I do, haha!) 

I have some glowlight tetras, candy cane tetras, a corydora catfish, a sparkling gourami, amano shrimp, ghost shrimp, cherry shrimp, and ramshorn snails all living together.

Does anyone else have a planted aquarium? Let me see it!!!

[hackerberry]

I do, planted shrimp tank.

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[dvg]

HB, what kind of shrimps do you have in your planted shrimp tank?














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[perrywing]

May 20, 2020 14:50:57 GMT -5 hackerberry said:

I do, planted shrimp tank.

Wow, beautiful! Those plants look happy and healthy and way less neglected than mine do, haha! What size tank is it? Also what kinds of shrimp are in there? Thanks for sharing!

[hackerberry]

Thanks guys, I am running a low tech 50 gallons tank. I only have Crystal Red Shrimps in there. Known to be one of the sensitive species of dwarf freshwater shrimp. I started with 10 shrimps 6 years ago and now there are hundreds in there.

[benny]

Beautiful tanks! I have a small 3.5 gallon Betts fish tank. It is horrid right now because I bought java ferns. The pet store chopped up the rhizomes so the plant is in shock. All the leaves blew up and activated the spores on the leaves. Now my tank is filled with small, floating plants and roots. I also have been battling brown algae. Never will be able to get it looking like your guy's, but I am doing my best!

[perrywing]

hackerberry Awesome! Wish I had the space for a larger tank like yours. I find myself spending way too much time trimming back the plants in there, and it would be so much easier to just let them grow wild in a bigger tank, haha! Beautiful shrimp too!

benny Oh no, that sucks! Sorry for your terrible start into aquatic plants. Hopefully you can get your issues cleared up and growing some cool things in there! If it's any consolation, I'm currently waging war with duckweed that is stubbornly REFUSING to die. REFUSING.

[va]

Don't want to steal this thread, but I've always wanted to do a ADA style Nature Aquarium, and I briefly started one before personal issues caused me to dismantle the tank within 2 months.

My first planted tank




TO get over it was hard, after obsessing over it for years prior, I had to go cold turkey on my OCD with that aspect.

Finally, after years of thinking about it, in Oct 2018, I had the idea to commit an ADA tank that I used to grow CPs as a planted tank. Ofcourse, the obsession came back stronger than ever. here are some pics over the time of having it. This has taken over my time and in effect my CPs have paid the price due to some huge losses.

[gj]

va beautiful aquarium! With the creatures, and the vegetation you have going, it really creates a full picture kind of effect. It looks very peaceful from here, although I'm sure the maintenance is anything but haha.

[dvg]

Haha! Varun you came back even stronger on your second attempt - WoW man! What a beautiful tank! 💓

Loved the red shrimp and tetras too!

You surely have the touch with these planted aquariums.

Have to ask if you fed them any live foods, since ive recently become fascinated with ditch water fauna and now am raising seed shrimp and cyclops copepods.

Also found a leech kicking itself around in one container and two mosquito larvae in a Utric dish, but hey, what would you expect from water collected from a rural Alberta ditch? 





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[va]

May 27, 2020 21:55:26 GMT -5 gj said:

va beautiful aquarium! With the creatures, and the vegetation you have going, it really creates a full picture kind of effect. It looks very peaceful from here, although I'm sure the maintenance is anything but haha.

Thanks. Haha. I just accept it..but yea, tell me about it. Early on, it was a daily water change. Then is the pursuit for the right balance in the tank and battling algae. Once it reaches an equilibrium with plant growth, fertilizing, CO2 injection and lighting, then things become a bit more easier. But basically it is weekly 50% water changes + vacuuming the aquasoil layer and removing detritus and once a month or two months, cleaning the filter system. 

May 27, 2020 21:57:12 GMT -5 dvg said:

Haha! Varun you came back even stronger on your second attempt - WoW man! What a beautiful tank! 💓

Loved the red shrimp and tetras too!

You surely have the touch with these planted aquariums.

Have to ask if you fed them any live foods, since ive recently become fascinated with ditch water fauna and now am raising seed shrimp and cyclops copepods.

Also found a leech kicking itself around in one container and two mosquito larvae in a Utric dish, but hey, what would you expect from water collected from a rural Alberta ditch? 

dvg

Lol. Funny you mention live foods. I have some very very picky inhabitants : Dario sp. such as Dario dario  (scarlet badis), Dario sp. myanmar (Black Tiger Badis) and they have a very strong prey drive and refuse anything that doesn't move. Hence, I learnt to culture my own living food. Currently my best success with keeping them healthy is coming from white worms/grindal worms. I also have Daphnia monia (water fleas?), but this batch of these fish don't care for them too much. Their fav is brine shrimp which I also occassionally used to be able to pick up from Big Als,, but since COVID hit, the fish store hasn't brought them in, so in essence the white worm cultures have been a God-send. 

If you notice in my other thread that I created, I have an infestation of cyclops in this tank that got in one some plants from some vendors. When I once got a culture from someone local on kijiji, the container came with mosquito larvae and a worm (no leech though). Honestly that is perfect for such fish too. A lot of the breeders in SE Asia use mosquito larvae to condition and feed their fish. What are you feeding them to?

[dvg]

I've been feeding the seed shrimp and the cyclops to my bladderwort traps in their water dishes or containers.

So far have tried it with gibba and my U. ren-nel.

Was hoping that they'd both clean up the algae and provide fodder for the bladders.

So far they seem happy enough in my U. ren-nel's large water dish, maybe only over an inch or so deep.













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[va]

Does it help? Cyclops may eat on stringy algae, but if you have the more "valuable" green water algae, daphnia would be a better bet (and better food for utrics). However, it is a catch22 as once u get daphnia, they would clear the water away immediately as they are incredibly efficient. lol

[dvg]

Probably a bit too early to tell, since I just discovered these ditch critters last weekend passed. lol

But when I looked in the ren-nel water dish today it looked less green to me, so will keep an eye on how things progress.

Wasn't able to find or notice any Daphnia in my current collection, but was thinking of collecting from some other water streams and marshes around here, and see what shows up.

And yeah, i hear you loud and clear about Daphnia, with them maturing from eggs to mature breeding adults in eight days.

Considering each female produces 10 eggs, if you start with a hundred Daphnia, the numbers skyrocket exponentially, in just a short period of a few scant weeks.

Haha, better have a plan for them to reduce their numbers by half or more and also keep a large reservoir of green water on hand, or there will be an inevitable colony crash.

All nature goes in cycles, up and down, feast and famine.















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[dvg]

Varun, I noticed that you mentioned that you had an infeststion of cyclops, in a previous post.

Just curious to know if cyclops are considered a scourge in the aquarium hobby.

Do you know if cyclops be can and will outcompete other arthropods, such as seed shrimps and daphnia?

Because my cultures were dipped from a ditch, it was tricky to choose what i was getting.

However, today I did go up to that same ditch with a teaspoon and a cup and tried to pick the seed shrimps from the top surface water with the spoon, like a kid would be picking up letters from their alphabet soup.

Have a few cultures of these on the go now, but they're mixed cultures, so not really sure how this will go.

Also threw in about 3 pond snails apiece, also collected from the ditch, into each of the 7 cultures.

Varun, do you have any video of your Daphnia feeding or swimming?

Are they quite difficult to keep long-term, or were you able to find a easy balance point with culturing them.

I'm looking for cleaning crew/feeders for my bladderwort water dishes, and am not really sure if I should try to grow the seed shrimp, and cyclops and possibly Daphnia separately, or as a group, but not sure if all of the eggs will be eaten by the most voracious feeders.

How much of a better food source would you reckon Daphnia are over the seed shrimps or the cyclops.

It is also a big plus if the cleaners also fit into the bladder-traps too.

It's always fun being a beginner in a new hobby.










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