stoneydee
Aquarium Advice Freak
I'm responsible for maintaining a 37 gallon (high) freshwater tank at my office. (For any who might have it, this is one of Marineland's Eclipse show tanks, and while it is very streamlined and tidy looking, it is an absolute nightmare to do any equipment add-ons without making it look tacky.)
The tank is 3+ years old, has two female adult angels (this tank is super for fish who are taller than they are long) and 5 black-skirted tetra. Because it only has the standard two 24" flourescent tubes, I've aquascaped with silk plants and a couple of pieces of artificial driftwood (the pH is on the low side of okay in this tank anyway, and I didn't want to drop it further).
So, as we used to say in grade school - whooper-do. It's boring. I want live plants - I've had a couple of planted tanks, a 20g and a 30g, at home, and I loved them. I stayed with lower light plants and started my 20g off with a silent cycle - it was so cool.
I do not have the option of upgrading lighting in the tank. What I am thinking of is building up the back right corner of the tank (about 25% of the available real estate) with rock work that would support a couple of small pots of low light live plants, and I would hide the pots with substrate - kind of a small mountain in the tank. I could tie some java fern to the "driftwood" I already have in there, and re-position it so the plants were raised closer to the lights.
Have I lost what was left of my mind? Would creating this little mountain cause any weight or pressure issues on the tank that I am not considering? (It's on a very sturdy commerical stand, sitting on a concrete floor.)
Any thoughts?
The tank is 3+ years old, has two female adult angels (this tank is super for fish who are taller than they are long) and 5 black-skirted tetra. Because it only has the standard two 24" flourescent tubes, I've aquascaped with silk plants and a couple of pieces of artificial driftwood (the pH is on the low side of okay in this tank anyway, and I didn't want to drop it further).
So, as we used to say in grade school - whooper-do. It's boring. I want live plants - I've had a couple of planted tanks, a 20g and a 30g, at home, and I loved them. I stayed with lower light plants and started my 20g off with a silent cycle - it was so cool.
I do not have the option of upgrading lighting in the tank. What I am thinking of is building up the back right corner of the tank (about 25% of the available real estate) with rock work that would support a couple of small pots of low light live plants, and I would hide the pots with substrate - kind of a small mountain in the tank. I could tie some java fern to the "driftwood" I already have in there, and re-position it so the plants were raised closer to the lights.
Have I lost what was left of my mind? Would creating this little mountain cause any weight or pressure issues on the tank that I am not considering? (It's on a very sturdy commerical stand, sitting on a concrete floor.)
Any thoughts?