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It's been a good weekend here in hot and humid Jakarta.Finally after months of searching found out about a place that stocks decent aquarium equipment. Turns out it's only a couple of blocks from my wifes mothers house , probably drove near it a 100 times without knowing. I've been on the hunt for a canister filter for some time (sick of using 3 crappy chinese internals)so headed out there Saturday evening.I was not disappointed. An absolute aquatic heaven, doesn't sell fish or plants (I have plenty of sources for those) only equipment, food, media, ferts etc, and sets up and maintains tanks for the rich and lazy.They even had Tropica Mastergrow (a major triumph here in Indonesia). Got my canister (yay!) and got a good deal for my next purchase - complete pressurized CO2 set up ( Bottle, regulator, diffuser, bubble counter) $80 !

Anyway when I walked into this place they had two magnificent display tanks on opposite sides of the shop. Huge 10 foot tanks, identical, one set up as a reef tank and the others was a planted set up. Both the finest exaples of their kind I've seen anywhere. Then it struck me this was the first chance to give a head to head comparison of the 2 different set ups. Now I think we can all agree that freshwater fish cannot compete with marine in terms of color or variety. But for me, in terms of the beauty of the tank as a whole, the planted won hands down. The marine just ended up looking like a mountain of colorful rock. The planted on the other hand was a dark mysterious land full of contrasting, colors and textures. You could have looked into that tank for hours and still not see everything. It just looked like a pulsing teeming jungle which made the reef look a bit sterile.A rainforest versus a mountain range.

I asked my wife (she being a neutral observer) and she also went for the planted. This is just my opinion, what's yours ?

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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.

I'm only new to this - i'm setting up my first tank now...

but I wanted one with corals & stuff that looked like an alien planet, but my other half (whose money I was kindly spending) prefured the look of plants & stuff.

We compromised & I have fake plastic plants !!!!

I've compared the two also, and a beautifully aquascaped freshwater tank does a lot more for me than any amount of rocks, no matter how you stack them or what living creature you stick on them.

Planted easily. my LFS has the same type of thing, but thiers are only 6 foot. i always think the marine is amazing but the planted is just so much more natural looking.... although reefs are just as natural as forest i have a 6 foot tank going in soon to replace one that burst. the tank that burst was a malawi tank and it was amazing, but it didnt have many plants. this next tank will be extremely heavily planted tetra tank... its gonna be stunning

I think the casual observer is more impressed with the bright colors of the marine fish than the tank set up itself. Those that plant truly appreciate the time and effort put into making the planted habitat look great and stay great.

When comparing the price of set up and maintainance a heavily planted can run the same as a simple marine. Minus the fish of course. A nice marine with living coral though is as impressive as it is expensive, but I to still always come back to the planted tanks.

Planted is best !

The Amazon Nut...