Attempt At Natural Planted Tank

[Jess]

Nice work Bren. The valis love it!

[Bren MacFish]

The vals love the front because the sunlight hits it there. Around the back there is a patch of crypts, beating up some java fern... a log of java moss, the brown sword is still there, and bits of that floaty fluffy carnivourous plant, and some other bits and pieces all a bit lanky.

There's 4 girls in there, and they were all quite near the front when that photo was taken. Where the light hits the top right corner you can see the outline of a dayak tail, there's another red where the wall reflections hit the tank, and another dayak sitting on the log, you also can't see.

I have a red male, but he's not pretty enough. My favourite dayak boy got some swimbladder infection and died and I figured out I don't really have the time to hatch brine shrimp etc anyway. Which is a shame because the dayak girls are gorgeous looking fish. The prettiest girl bettas ever... give male plakats a run for their money and they can live together. Besides, it's been a closed system for too long and none of my fish have any resistance to finrot or anything, so when I do sell them on, everyone complains that they suddenly get ill.

There's no room for substrate in the 4x1x1 because the water has to pass thru the gravel under the partitions. The substrate would all end up in the filter. I had plants in jars which was useful because I could just gravel vac under them at cleaning time. I suppose you could use bits of hose at the back to pass the water under each partition without disturbing the substrate...

Oh... and I "accidentally" bought a 2x2x2 cube when I was trying to sell the 4x1x1, so I'm going to break down this wild and wooly tank and move all the plants and pretty betta girls into double the space! With a bit more thought to landscaping this time.

[Bren MacFish]

Oh and I have a 18inch tank which is Natural Planted and sitting in a window. That's chugging along without cleaning, altho there is a bit more silt build up there. It's pretty small and shallow.

You don't need a coke bottle, I have two more 18 inch glass tanks and an 18 inch deep acrylic tank and four 2ftrs you could play around with. I'll post my spare tanks for sale soon.

Oh... I have an old divided into 4 2ft tank that will only work with a thick substrate like an NPT or undergravel filtration because the dividers are too high off the floor. The tank is fine but the glass dividers are all marked. You can have that for $8. No lid.

I was going to NPT it and set it up on a shelf under a window so it didn't need any lights to keep running, but I'm just going to be a cubist for the next few years, not a betta breeder so I won't need lots of homes for boys.

[Bettarazzi]

I "accidentally" bought a 2x2x2 cube

No, that's great. That means there's hope for a comeback. Ahhh... a betta wall.... that's what you need. :P

[Bren MacFish]

The walls in my office are only a metre high then it becomes roof... one row of tanks IS a betta wall.

Oh and I forgot to say. I HAVEN'T done anything to that tank in 6 months apart from top up the water lost during evaporation. No glass cleaning, no fertilising, no pruning, nothing. Oh... I took out some snails and some hair algae... but that's it.

[Bren MacFish]

Okay, now this tank is completely over grown, I'm almost ready to upgrade all my plants to the 2ft cube.

Do you realise that's over 200 litres of water!

I've been collecting 2nd hand gravel and 2nd hand tree stumps... well they're more like tree stumps than driftwood. Eventually this will be a community tank featuring small fish... majoring in large planting.

I love bettas but I just don't have the time for water changing males at the moment. Luckily the NPT runs without water changes. I can still keep betta girls.