My Polys! And some other lovely fish. (pic heavy)

[Alexkoj]

Thanks! It's quite simple really, so long as you choose proper plants and have enough lighting. I like to go for a mix of hardy plants, and plants that grow fast. I don't use root tabs or any co2 mumbo-jumbo, fish poop and the odd fertilizer will be more than enough to make your plants grow, the only really important thing is lighting. If you employ various snails, then they will happily munch up any rotting plant matter that you can't get to, so I would definitely use snails with a planted tank. And snails such as ramshorn snails won't ever eat healthy plants, no matter what anyone says. They're not physically able to. As I mentioned in the OP my maintenance haven't been all that great lately, you can put together a nicer tank than this one without much effort. Just be patient, and expect some plants to die while the setup matures, these can just be replaced by other other plants. There isn't much upkeep other than trimming a few leaves, removing ruined leaves, and replanting the odd floater. Usually I do this with water changes.

Thanks for the reply mate. How many hours in a day are the lights turned on? It's an absolute jungle in there man

 

[Mighty Wizard]

Thank you!

The plants I have in this tank are Java fern, Amazon sword, Dwarf amazon sword, a couple of different Cryps, Bolbitis, some Anubias, and Pistia floating plants. I never did get the name of the stem plants with the narrow leaves, but they are definitely a favourite, and the name of the thin-stemmed lotus like plants escape me, they're Brazilian I think.

As for substrate, I use sand taken right from the beach! No factory made "aquarium safe" nonsense. Sand collected from a healthy environment in nature will already be literally stuffed with nutrients and healthy minerals that the plants will thrive on, and the crushed shells in the sand acts as a safety net of sorts when it comes to ph, the ph levels will keep stable, as the pieces of shell will slowly dissolve if the water gets sourer, while if the water doesn't get sour they won't dissolve. Makes for a very constant and predictable ph value around 7.

I employ mainly three species of snail for my aquarium, Melanoides tuberculata, Thiara winterii, and the afore-mentioned ramshorns. The former two are sand snails, and are essential in a tank with fine sand, and especially so when plants are involved. They will move about under the sand eating detritus, and aerate the sand to prevent co2 buildup, and let the plant roots "breathe" as it were. There are other snails also, like the nerite snails, apple snail, and an elephant snail, but the smaller ones are the really important ones.

As for my lighting schedule, it can be somewhat erratic. Usually the tank sees 10-12 hours of light a day, sometimes more sometimes less. I've found that pushing the lighting hours really isn't much of a big deal, so long as there are enough plants to hinder algae growth.

 

[Mighty Wizard]

Thanks for the reply mate. How many hours in a day are the lights turned on? It's an absolute jungle in there man

Heh thanks I'm incredibly lax with the lighting, but I try to let the plants get at least half a day of light, although as I said I'm incredibly lax with it. Ultimately, I've found that plants love light, and they won't mind a little longer than the usually prescribed eight hours.

 

[Mighty Wizard]

I forgot to add that while I use sand from the beach, I do wash it thoroughly in buckets, until the water that comes out is clean. Might be an important thing to mention.

 

[twentyleagues]

Hey! Looks really great!

 

[magpie]

Looking good! Happy to see another planted tank here.

So what is your upgrade plan? With the gar I assume quite a lot larger?

Good luck with the move. We just did and moving the 20 gallon was stressful enough. I am so happy I didn't have the 65 to worry about and the inhabitants.

clm08k - how powerful is your light? You can also get nutrient deficiencies. Things to think about. It can take a while for things to balance out.

 

[FishBeast]

Beautiful tank! Thank you for sharing and I am envious of your plant husbandry abilities.

 

[Mighty Wizard]

Beautiful tank! Thank you for sharing and I am envious of your plant husbandry abilities.

Thanks! You'd be surprised how little effort has gone into it, all things considered.

Looking good! Happy to see another planted tank here.

So what is your upgrade plan? With the gar I assume quite a lot larger?

Good luck with the move. We just did and moving the 20 gallon was stressful enough. I am so happy I didn't have the 65 to worry about and the inhabitants.

Thank you! Thankfully I'm not moving very far, so I'm not really worried about the fish, seeing as they're all very hardy fish. The plants however will probably have to be uprooted and replanted, hence why I haven't been too iffy about the upkeep.

Upgrade plans are quite extensive indeed! I have a 400-something Litre tank waiting for my fish now, and this new tank will be this winter's project I suppose. Then towards the end of spring/beginning of summer I'll be looking to upgrade again, I've set a minimum goal of 2x1x1 metres for dimensions. Hopefully, their final home down the line will be a positively HUGE tank, 2-3 thousand litres, depeding on whether I get many new fish in the meantime. This will be a DIY project, most likely acrylic, and I'm quite looking forward to it. What I'm not looking forward to is regular maintenance of this future tank, it will be heavily planted, and I might actually have to literally hop into the tank to trim the plants. I'm not sure how I'll go about that in an intelligent way. Maybe I'll build some sort of crane or something. Hah.

 

[Jafar P Arab]

So I've been wanting to post pictures of my setup for quite some time now, and since I'll be moving in a couple of days the fish will go in separate tanks and such as i finish moving in, and setting up my newer, bigger tank, while this one will hopefully become the new home of my Channa bankanensis. Figure I'll keep you posted about that as well. I decided to post these pictures here in the poly section, as it is first and foremost meant for my Polypterids, and this is, after all, the place I spend most of my time here. Besides, I don't think any of you have anything against gars, snakeheads, and wolf fish.

I'd also like to add that the tank is in a rather sorry state at the moment, I've been half-assing the upkeep lately as I'm moving soon anyway. So that's why some of the plants look like ****, if you're wondering.

The tank is 200L, and they're rather crammed at the moment, but they'll endure a little longer. I'm running dual internal filters, and I'm never doing that again. Those will be torn the hell out and replaced with proper external ones, for this tank and all future tanks. Although I am considering a sump for the next poly tank, I might instead save it for what I like to call "the final solution".

Anyway here we go, enjoy.

Full tank shots.
View attachment 1282016 View attachment 1282017

The Delhezi, pretty sure it's a she. View attachment 1282018 View attachment 1282019

The Polli, lazy bastard. (and a cameo by John B. Ristlenose)View attachment 1282020 View attachment 1282021

The Senegal, fun little dude.View attachment 1282022 View attachment 1282023

My Florida gar. His tail has gotten a little munched on, by the Delhezi and Wolf, but as he's still behaving normal, and growing quickly, I'll wait and see before seperating them. Rest assured I am keeping a close eye on him. View attachment 1282024 View attachment 1282025

Burmese Snakehead! She's not exactly beautiful, but she's something.View attachment 1282026 View attachment 1282028

I nearly **** my pants back when I ordered this guy and opened the box. It was nearly full grown. A wolf fish, biggest fish in the tank. Luckily he/she turned out to be quite alright, although the shiny gar sometimes gets a little jab or a shredded fin. View attachment 1282030 View attachment 1282031

The biggest Ropefish taking a peek and the Senegal. View attachment 1282032

Snakehead and Senegal chilling in the plants.View attachment 1282033

Polli and Senegal looking stupid. View attachment 1282034

Polli and Snakehead having a stare-off perhaps. View attachment 1282035

This is the middle sized of the three big ropes. You might be able to spot that his lower jaw is all messed up. Back when I ordered him, with two others, the fool at the wholesaler had put all three inside a small bag, and this one, who was the biggest then, arrived with his jaw torn off. It's healed rather remarkably however, and I'm very curious to see just how well it will grow with time.View attachment 1282036

View attachment 1282027

Thats nice collection lpve the del and snakehead plants look kool