My 20g Planted Journal (! 56k)

[Karackle]

About 6months ago I decided it was time to take my 20 gallon out of the plastic and into the planted realm. I decided I wanted to make the tank look a little more sophisticated and figured I could either purchase all new silk and plastic plants, or spend the money on live plants, something I'd always wanted to try. I was also having trouble with water quality (WQ) and was losing fish due to a worn out bubbler that was no longer passing enoguh water through the small filter. So it was time to upgrade the whole system. Here is a photo journey from the start until now, and I will try to update regularly from here on out (this 20 gallon journal took a backseat to my 5 gallon tank which i started from scratch)...I hope you enjoy, and thanks for looking! Also...any suggestions are welcome!

Tank Specs:
20 gallon High tank
Regular aquarium gravel substrate
Marineland Penguin 100 Bio-Wheel HOB filter
18" 15watt fluorescent bulb

Flora:
Wisteria
Purple Cabomba
Anubias (on driftwood)
Small red Crypt
Large green crypt
A little bit of anachris that I might pull so I can dose with excel

Fauna:
3 female Bettas
3 platys
3 zebra danios
3 glolight tetras
3 neon tetras
3 guppies
1 blue dwarf gourami
1 clown pleco

My 20 gallon before "renovations" began:




After preliminary renovations:




And moving into more renovations as the new filter began doing it's job and my WQ and tank had restabilized...

January:


February:


March:

[Karackle]

And some of the inhabitants of my 20gallon:

Lady Bettas (2 of the 3):




The 1 baby guppy survivor (he figured out how to hide out from the other fish and get enough food to grow!):


and my Gourami:


Of course there's more, but these are the ones who have "sat still" long enough for me to get half-decent shots of them!

[marchmaxima]

I love the Gourami... but then again, I am partial to Gouramis.

How your otos going? did you find the one who went AWOL?

[Karackle]

Heehee thanks! Yeah, i think he's beautiful!

the otos are doing great, but no, i never found the 3rd one....never found a floater, haven't seen him swimming around, and the other 2 are always together. I'll update more in my Oto thread

[Karackle]

Just wanted to post some updated pictures of my 20g. I think it's growing in pretty well, I added some more Crypt spiralis (sp?) in the back and moved around some of the older spiralis toward the back and over a little. Let me know what you think, and enjoy!

My 20g without a flash using a couple different settings:

[Karackle]

20g Update! It's getting a bit jungle-y on the left side, but i think the Crypt Spiralis (sp?) is growing in nicely in the middle (it's only been ~3weeks)

Here's a couple very similar pictures, I was wondering which lighting you think looks best in the pictures? (it's just different settings on the camera).

Let me know what you think about the tank and the camera settings or anything else!!! thanks, and enjoy!

[neilanh]

My guess is that the second picture is closest to what you naturally see with the eye. But there's a crispness to the 3rd and less yellow that I really like.

[CluelessInNY]

LOL! I asked a question on here and went back to post this instead. I didn't realize this was a freshwater set up! LOL I'm so dumb

[Sahabo]

Wow...looking really beautiful. Newbie question: what kind of driftwood do you have in there? It's lovely and I'm looking to get some myself as well as going planted.

[Zagz]

Oh it is looking great! Is that malaysian driftwood?