My 20 gallon long - update 2016

[Adam C.]

What a nice tank sir. I really like what you have done with it. What are you using fore your foreground plants? Front center? Front right?

 

[KingKoopa512]

Thanks, you are all too kind. I really like how it's looking right now- sometimes I'll catch myself forgetting what I'm doing and just staring at the tank. xD I'm also torn between being satisfied and wanting to keep working with this scape to see what it could become with more time, and wanting to tear it all apart to start something completely different.

I don't think that is AR mini. The package was labeled AR "cardinalis" if I remember correctly.

It's just a ar plant nice looking tank looks sweet

 

[PerfectDepth]

Thanks. Adam, those are Brazilian microswords and staurogyne repens

 

[PerfectDepth]

New scape, new fish:




Added HC, it's doing well so far.
New fish: 16 ember tetras

Still have 1 sparkling gourami and loads of shrimp in there. Word of warning: watch those CPDs! Not sure if my school was not large enough, just had too few females or what, but the dominant male ended up pestering the rest of them to death. I relocated the bully to the qt tank, but the rest were already really stressed, turned pale and eventually died. A single cpd fry survived the fray and is still in there, now almost full-grown. No more CPDs for me, too pricy around here. Both lfs always want $8-$12 each for them. Got some embers for $2.50 instead

 

[Fresh2o]

Nice! Left side is open now. More reds than I remember from the old scape. And a new carpet?
It's been a while since you've checked in.

 

[Bert2oo1]

Looks great! [emoji106] love the colour [emoji16]

 

[Fresh2o]

I have embers and CPDs as well. Had more CPDs at one time but they slowly disappeared (when I had a lot of plants there many places to hide or die). Yes, I had a dominant male that was bossy. The plant cover helped some.
My LFS is similar with the CPD cost. That's a good price for embers.

 

[TMaier]

Oh that's just dead sexy right there![emoji6]

 

[Ceej]

Gorgeous tank! Are you still using the Finnex Planted 24/7? Your plants have incredible color.

 

[Vladka]

That's so gorgeous!!! I'm jealous! I haven't gotten the whole landscaping thing down yet [emoji31]

 

[PerfectDepth]

Thanks!
Yeah... been a while. This summer has been a blur.

Regarding the CPDs, I would not have guessed that such a tiny, normally peaceful fish could be so nasty! Of course it happened due to breeding which was exciting to see at first, but wow it turned into a disaster very quickly. Relentless chasing, shredding tails.. thankfully he left the other fish alone.

Ceej, yeah I'm still using the standard 24/7 finnex. I'm on my second one now. I ruined the first by trying to connect the coupler on the power cord the wrong way, which you can't really do, but it still made contact for a split second which was enough to damage it. As soon as I connected it the correct way... smoke plume of death

 

[PerfectDepth]

Tank is/was doing great, but it's time for some major changes, plus I was getting tired of all the trimming every single week:


Most of the fast growing stem plants are gone now. I'm going for a mostly low height midground/foreground look which should hopefully be much lower maintenance. Stay tuned for an eventual photo update. It's pretty bare and still in growout stage at this point.

I will be keeping the alternanthera though


I also setup a new 20H low-light tank this weekend.

 

[goatnad]

wow that is one truly beautiful tank. cant wait to see how your new 20g turns out now.