critique my tank

[undercutter]

I have a 16 gallon tank with a betta (veiltail I believe), 3 albino cories, 2 assassin snails and 5 ghost shrimp, it's been cycled and fully stocked for almost a month now

I feed once a day, I give betta freeze dried food - brine shrimp, bloodworms, and tubifex worms all on different days, and cories get sinking pellets - hikari, shrimp or algae

Betta ignores everybody else in the tank unless it's feeding time, once it's done eating its food it goes after sinking pellets, once all the food is gone it gets mad, flares up and chases cories around for a little bit

betta has some caves to swim around in and shrimp have a little house they can crawl into if they need to molt

I'm still trying to figure out how much to feed it, he can eat quite a big chunk in under 2 minutes

The substrate is gravel mixed with eco-complete

I have a lot of brown algae right now but from what I understand it's common for a new aquarium and will go away on its own

I am really new to this hobby, I didn't know anything about fish or aquariums 2 months ago then I read a bunch of articles online and decided to give it a go

ps does anybody know what my plants are called? I picked them up at the store at random I'm not sure what they are though lol

 

[fort384]

Unfortunately, many of your plants are non-aquatic. The white and green striped plant is called Dracena sanderiana, and will not survive submerged.

The other non-aquatic (possibly) appears to be a Brazilian sword. They will also not survive underwater.

I am 100% sure on the Dracena sanderiana, but only about 50% sure as to whether the other plant is a brazilian sword.

 

[Tasha]

I know nothing about fishtank plants, but your tank and fish "look" very nice

 

[undercutter]

Unfortunately, many of your plants are non-aquatic. The white and green striped plant is called Dracena sanderiana, and will not survive submerged.

The other non-aquatic (possibly) appears to be a Brazilian sword. They will also not survive underwater.

I am 100% sure on the Dracena sanderiana, but only about 50% sure as to whether the other plant is a brazilian sword.

I got two of the plants from petsmart and the one on the front left from a local fish store, they both assured me that the plants are perfectly fine to be submerged, that is to be expected though I guess

if that is true I doubt they even have true aquatic plants

what are some examples of a freshwater plant that thrives submerged?

will see how it goes, if my plants start dieing I'll replace them with something I order online

 

[fort384]

The 2 you got from petsmart are the 2 non-aquatic ones. There are literally hundreds of plants suitable for aquariums. A good place to start would be PlantGeek.net - Your Aquatic Plant Resource .

The place to start with planted tanks though is lighting -- what kind of lighting do you have on the tank?

 

[undercutter]

double

 

[undercutter]

The 2 you got from petsmart are the 2 non-aquatic ones. There are literally hundreds of plants suitable for aquariums. A good place to start would be PlantGeek.net - Your Aquatic Plant Resource .

The place to start with planted tanks though is lighting -- what kind of lighting do you have on the tank?

I guess I'll give the local fish store another try they have a tank where they keep all their plants submerged under water that you can pick from, although they don't have a big selection, unlike petsmart that has their plants preserved in a plastic tube with a jelly

I have a biocube with a built it fluorescent light 18w 10000K, which from what I understand is sufficient for most plants, once brown algae is gone I can play around with how long I keep the light on to keep regular algae in check, right now I have it running 8 hours a day

 

[fort384]

I would definitely not call it sufficient for most plants. I would call it sufficient for low light plants, however.

 

[undercutter]

looks like I need some more research to do then, thanx for the help, I haven't really studied plant keeping that much yet I've been more concerned about the fish

so I need to replace two of the plants in my tank with some low light fully aquatic plants and then it should be good to go

 

[fort384]

Sounds like you are off to a great start.

Welcome to AA by the way...

 

[undercutter]

I know nothing about fishtank plants, but your tank and fish "look" very nice

thanx, one thing about freshwater fish is that they look kind of 'dull' for the lack of a better word compared to saltwater fish, with a few exceptions, so I tried to get something that is freshwater but still looks colorful and exotic

betta is an obvious choice, if I get a bigger tank in the future I'm gonna get a school of pictus catfish, they are really cool with their huge whiskers and never stop moving, and then either a pair of angelfish or a dwarf puffer colony, as well as bamboo shrimp

tiger oscar is another great looking fish with an awesome personality but you need a really big tank for that

 

[Pecktec]

You need to look for Anubis, and java fern, java moss, stuff like that.

 

[jetajockey]

Java ferns would work great. You can keep the dracaena in there you just need to build a ledge to put it on so that it is sticking out of the water.

 

[Pecktec]

You can keep the dracaena in there you just need to build a ledge to put it on so that it is sticking out of the water.

That would be pretty cool. I have seen some cool Beta bowls with dracaena also.

 

[undercutter]

so I replaced all the plants in the tank with fully aquatic ones

ghost shrimp:

I'm probably gonna add one more albino cory otherwise I believe my tank is perfectly set up and I will keep it like this for a while

 

[undercutter]

one thing that is weird my plant on the front left, it has a huge stem going straight up, I actually clipped it at the base when I bought it, and it grew all the way back up almost all the way to the top the way you see in the pics in about 3 weeks, the thing is a monster so I'm gonna let it be and see what happens

 

[Pecktec]

one thing that is weird my plant on the front left, it has a huge stem going straight up, I actually clipped it at the base when I bought it, and it grew all the way back up almost all the way to the top the way you see in the pics in about 3 weeks, the thing is a monster so I'm gonna let it be and see what happens

I see that how odd. It sort of looks like a runner. They are usually underground or right on the surface though so I'm most likely wrong.