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nice pictures
But i like the second picture best

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

Dr. Bonk
I have to say.. all the pics you have posted here. 1, 2 and 3 are amazing.. and to be honest inspiring.. it makes me want to replant my whole tank 8-) .. as for my personal prefrence.. shot two looks alot better to me.. but i dont think thier is a right or wrong answer.. and ive always liked a lil swimming room in my tanks. the third pic is amazing as well. very green and healthy looking. may i ask.. what is the bright red plant on the middle left of your tank? and how much lighting to do u have?

whats really cool bonk.. is that as you kept that third picture for quite some time im sure.. i betcha lots of people that have looked at this post have copied your picture, and now have something to aspire to.. well done
CJ

Last edited by Wompa at 31-Jan-2005 21:21

Alex 4 eva, I'm not quite sure which plant you mean, if it is about the plants in the photo that I posted in my reply to Bensaf, then I can't help you as that is not my tank, but a tank which I admire very much (Though I don't know whether it still exists). All of the photos are freshwater tanks, so seahorses should not be present in any of them

Azn_Devil, maybe with rearranging I could get something nice, but plants of that size have extensive root systems, which are very hard to get back into the substrate as they are. Besides that, those plants just keep growing, so even if it would look nice for a while with the larger plants, after a week it would be completely full again. Planted tanks are always and forever changing as long as the plants are growing. They need attention every week or so in order to keep the chaos at bay Trimming always has just a temporary effect

nice tank!

i cant wait till i can get sufficent lighting for real plants

i liked the bushiness of the first pic, but it was a little unorganized. i think if u kept the plants at the sizes in the first pic and just re arranged them a little, you could have enough space for correct lighting and room for fishies.

whats the creamy plant in the last pic
and
whats the green one next to it

ohhh and it looks like there is a sea horse in the bottom right hand corner
Alex

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''All the clown fish and yellow tangs in the world cant save you now!''

Hi Martin,

Should have recognised the Myrophyllium, I have a lot myself. But mine was transferred to the back and has lost the "fluffy" look that yours still has. Not enought light at the back. Got to the stage where some plants are growing so well they are shading out their neighbours so I've had to remove some species all together.

That pic above is my dream tank Dutch style or no Dutch style love the way the different shapes and shades blend into one another seamlessly.

I know what you mean about the trimming. Actually your thread just goes to prove the enourmous amount of maintenance a healthy well planted tank needs. Left alone for even a realatively short period like 2 weeks and it can run amok. I find now that maintenance is a daily affair now.Rather then do it weekly , which was taking 3 or so hours, I do a little something each evening. I just do a small section at a time. The problem is there is always something in the tank that bugs me because it's just not quite right. Even then major overhauls aren't avoidable. After constant trimming some stem plants start looking misshapened and have to be uprooted and the bottoms discarded. Cyrpts become so large and dense they begin to choke one another and need to be thinned out. Sometimes wish the darn thing would stop growing and just stay the way they are.All part of the fun.

Same problem with finding plants here. I have a small 5 gal with a very spefic planting plan, but can't find the plants I want . Living in the tropics I probably have a greater choice then most but for some reason certain plants are damn near impossible to find - Hemianthus, Lobelia, most Anubias,Stargrass and a few others. Same with fish. But being a Westerner I tend to stick out like a sore thumb at the markets so a few of the more serious guys have got to know me and have given me plants and fish from there private stock or are helping me track down what I want so it's getting better. But even after a year the tank is still evolving and will continue to do so. Some plants have grown in unexpected ways and need to be moved and rearranged. It never ends I guess that's the joy of it, although it doesn't always feel so joyful :88)

Anyway glad to see you too are back posting. Like yourself I went through an incredibly busy period the last few months so just didn't have much time to post. Getting a bit better now so hopefully can participate more.Keep up the postings I've always enjoyed seeing the progress on your tank (you always have an idea I can steal ).

BTW, congrats on the Angel babies ! Again proof that a healthy planted tank is THE best environment for the fishes they will always reward the effort.

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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.

Hey Bernard,

Indeed, it has been a while, but I've noticed you've started posting again, as have I so I'm sure we'll bump into eachother more often again

First of all, I don't have any hornwort in my tank! I considered it for a while when I still had the algae problem, but in the end decided it is too ugly a plant. I think you mistake the Myriophyllum for hornwort, Myriophyllum has much finer "leaves" than hornwort, but also grows like mad, not quite as fast as the Lymnophila, but still a couple of cm per day. I do like that plant very much, the dark green in the older sections and lighter green in the newly growing tips gives a very nice contrast to the background.

About the difference between the two situations, I can see that both have their merits, personally I like the second photo a lot more, precisely because of the reasons you gave. I like having seperate clusters of plants to accentuate the contrast in color and shape of the plants. IT is a style of aquascaping which suits me very well, called (how else?) "the Dutch style" Here is an excellent example:


For some people this style may be a bit too cultured, and not very natural, and indeed, it isn't extremeply natural, but I find it very beautiful nonetheless. The current lightsetup in my tank does not allow to get my tank to the standard seen in the photo, maybe in a couple of years, when I'm richer and can build myself a custom hood for my tank (which then hopefully will be about 200 x 70 x 70 or so). For now I am quite pleased with my tank, though I'd love to replace some of the plants with something else, unfortunately the LFS's here in Finland have only a very small selection of plants and I end up compromising.

To come back to the difference between the two photos, it is only a time period of two weeks even now the tank again looks more like photo one then photo two. The excessive weeding I do every time allows me to just enjoy the tank for about 1½ weeks before I start to get annoyed with the excess growth If I'd weed so that the tank would be more like photo one when I'm done, I would have to be working on it every couple of days in order to keep the more light needy plants alive... I don't really have the time for that (besides the fact that I like the second situation better )

See you around over here, I'm sure these forums will get friendlier if we individuals keep being friendly ourselves[/font]

Hi MartinWhats up doc?

It's been a while.

Had to get that out of my system.

I can understand why so many people like the first pic, and I can also understand why you didn't. Yes the density of the plants in the first is appealing but it obviously looks quite overgrown a good trimming was unavoidable and neccessary.

But I would have liked something in between. What's attractive about the overgrown tank is how the plants have blended and you have that effect of of one plant popping out of a thick bunch of something else (you know me and jungles). In the second pic it's kind of a bunch of hornwort beside a bunch of hygro beside a bunch of...and so on. They are a bit too neat and organised and the same size and shape. But that's just me.

Either way the tank still continues to look fantastic. Yours was always one of my favourite tanks and I've never seen it look anything less then great :88)

Last edited by bensaf at 09-Jan-2005 08:09

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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.

The first looks really nice, but the second is better for your Angels, as they have more space.

Congratulations for your Tank.




http://www.flickr.com/photos/corydoras/
Member of the Malta Aquarist Society - 1970.
http://www.maltaaquarist.com

Well I came back from my two week vacation in Florida earlier this week, and yesterday I finally had the time to do something about my tank. Even though I know my plants grow fast I was still horrified at how much they had actually grown during the 2 weeks I had been away, here is a photo of what it looked like yesterday morning just before I started my work on it... I hardly knew where to start:

Dr. Bonke attached this image:

I like your tank. Very nice

I like the second pic better

Last edited by PJ at 03-Jan-2005 03:39

I guess we have a bit of a split perspective here I have three issues with the state of the tank in the first photo (the overgrowth). First, the fish don't have all that much space to move around anymore, the angels were mostly in the left part of the tank, and as they are getting somewhat territorial that was becoming a problem. Secondly, the Ceratopteris, Nymphea and Lymnophila were growing so big that they were blocking most of the light from the slower growing plants, which really started to suffer. This was most evident in the sunset hygro, which turned almost green, when healthy that is a lovely deep pink color. The third reason is simple, I just don't like it

Oh btw Angeladdict, the tank dimensions are 120 cm wide (4 ft), 41 cm deep (16", and 55 cm high (22", which makes it about 65 US gallons I believe.

Dr. Bonke

I personally prefer the first photo, yet again it would soon take up all the free space for your angles to move around.
Fantastic tank

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
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Both look great....but, I must agree with Cup of Noodles...I really like the first one...

***wishes her plants would take off like that***
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Last edited by BBNP at 01-Jan-2005 21:56

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

it looks better.

In the 1st pic, it looks like the fish have no room to swim around.

Nice! How big is the tank?

Very nice, but I must say, the bushiness (albeit overgrowth) of the first picture rather appeals to me .

I then went to rigourously at work, basically removing almost all plants, taking off the lower bits and then replanting a small portion of them. I think it looks an awful lot better now, here is the result, one day later



Dr. Bonke attached this image: