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I was Just out for a walk (it was cold I was bored absaloutly nothing to do) so I started thinking about what to do with my 5g tank, (mostly what it should look like) & I was thinking about what Takashi Amano (sp?) usually says when he judges that aga thing its usually

You should have your stemmed plants in the background not the forground of your tank

& stuff like that the I thought, WHY NOT DO THE COMPLEATE OPPOSITE??!! & ONLY have stemmed in the forground!! How do you think that'll look? I was Thinking of calling it "The Sparkiling Jungle" beacause i'm planning on trying to get a couple of sparking gourmais :88), & ususlly when I read a article about them it says they like to hide & that they tend to be shy & like cover, so I thought they'd perfect for this tank , I plan on using broad leafed plants (umm I think its called broad leafed like Swords (??) I think cali has a couple of swords in hs tank & there amazing I can't remember what their colour was though , I want to try to stick with brighish plants that require low or med or high (dont know how well the high light plants will grow) light, (11 watts I think) plats 4 a begginner..

I hope this makes sense

Last edited by dude_dude at 08-May-2005 03:07

You're going to have a hell of a time with maintainence.

really? Ive never had live plants before im a newbie with plants.. should i make a post in the plant forum?

Well, the first thing is that swords are not stem plants... The second thing is that Amano judges tanks by his aesthetic style, which is fine, but he often can't see outside of his box. You can see many lovely tanks in the AGA competition, but he hasn't got anything good to say about them because they're not in his style. The third thing is that there might be a visual problem with stem plants planted in the front and that is that they if they're fully grown they will blcok most of your view on what's behind. Not to say that it's not possible. I remember seeing a picture of a tank that I thought was very nice and the only plant used was Tonina, but the person who made the tank made a slope towards the front, which does take a hell lot of maintenance, as all the stems need to be trimmed periodically and that's a lot of stems to trim in varying lengths.

Then again, try it. Most of us a vision of what we want our tank to look like, we plant it, the plants grow, and we realise it wasn't really what we want, so we start moving plants around, adding plants, removing other plants and playing with things until we're satisfied. Some of us are never satisfied

The maintenance shouldn't be extremely time-consuming, unless you plant on adding CO2. You just have to pick your plants carefully to match the size of your tank. As always, you can check Tropica for detail information about plants and make your decision. If you are looking for suggestions about specific plants, this post will get more replies in the planted aquaria forum.

thanx I think thats all I have to say atm..

plant help

another quick Q, ( I dont think its worth making another thread 4 this)but would it be okay 2 have

2 sparkiling gourmais & 3 ottos in this 5g?



Last edited by dude_dude at 08-May-2005 04:56

Ottos in a 3 gallon generally arent a good idea.
They prefer faster flowing and slightly cooler waters....not sure on the gouramis.
Remember that a 5 will be difficult from the plant sense especially if you use fast consuming plants.

^_^
[hr width='40%']"Cause you can't jump the track,we're like cars on a cable
and life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button girl,
So cradle your head in you hands
And breathe, just breathe..."

I hope this makes sense

Doesn't make much sense to me

First you say you want all stem plants and then you mention you want swords

They are completely different.

1 sword plant would outgrow a 5 gal.

There's a reason stem plants don't go in the front. It will look a mess very quickly.

All stem plants will be very difficult to maintain and will not look good for 95 % of the time.

If you are serious about doing this the best thing you can do is to take some time to research and understand how plants function and what their requirements are and choose those whose requirements you can fulfill.

Any other approach is doomed to failure.

---

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

The sparkling gouramis will be alright as a pair or trio in that tank. They won't really care how you plant it so long as they have something to swim through but you might want to research your plants a little more. Sword plants will outgrow that tank very easily. They outgrow my 55g. You could try some crypts. There are a few that look similar to swords, they don't get as big, they won't require as much maintenance, and they will grow in almost any light level. They also come in a few different colors and shades. Here's a poor quality pic of some of my sparklings gouramis (it's hard to take good pics of fish that are barely 1" )


And here's a pic showing a crypt. The big green plant behind the rock is a sword plant which in the past few months has at least doubled if not tripled in size. It's reached it's limit in my 55g and is having growth problems. The brownish/red plant in front of the rock cave is the crypt and took about a year to reach that size. It's probably done growing and has started sending out baby crypts.


Last edited by sham at 08-May-2005 13:06[/font]

Last edited by sham at 08-May-2005 13:07[/font]