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Well I realized that the betta and harlies in my 10g were all Asian...so I decided to plant the tank with Asian plants. I am not happy with what it looks like now, so I was going to change it anyways.

I have corkscrew vals, rotala rotundifolia, and a few crypts in there now.

What are some other Asian plants that would fit in a 10g?

*Kristin*

Your plants are good ones to work with: the aquascaping may be your problem. Can you show us a picture, that would help an awful lot. Remember, you can drop every Asian plant out there into that tank and it won't make it look good. And in a smaller tank like that you dont' want to push it with too many varieties.

Crypts are always great, there are varieties that can be placed from mid-ground to foreground.

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Back in the saddle!

I have no aquascaping skills whatsoever. I changed the plants around a couple weeks ago. Now it just looks disorganized. I had wisteria in there but got tired of it getting tangled.

edit: I forgot to mention the bacopa, taiwon moss, dwarf sag, couple e. tennellus and rosette swords. And I just got the crypts last week, so of course they melted. I am waiting for them to grow back.

*Kristin*

Now keep in mind I almost feel bad about giving you advice on aquascaping because I'm so bad at it myself , but I think the first thing to do would be work on hardscaping. Find a nice piece of wood or two to work around - that will give you a solid base at least. Then you can work on building plant groups around it, rather than having them sit in open space, like the bacopa right now.

Bushy plants would be good for the corners IMO, something like asian ambulia may work, though depending on nutrients and light it may require some trimming often. It'll also help you hide the equipment in the back.

In my head right now I see a piece of hardscape between the rotala and tropica swords. Then arrange the swords so that size-wise they move largest to smallest from the outside to the inside, maybe placing the smaller one closer to the front of the tank and to the left of the larger one.

As I said, this is coming from a verified aquscaping flunk so take it with a grain of salt, but I really think hardscape wise you need to get something going to add some depth.

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Back in the saddle!

Hey your tank looks loads better than any of mine. So I'll gladly take your advice. I will start looking for a good piece of wood. The problem I have is that the LFS don't have a good selection and when you order online, you don't really know what shape you are getting.

I have 2wpg. I am not sure if ambulia will do alright.

*Kristin*

What are you doing as far as Nutrients, substrate and stuff? I want to plant my 10 gallon soon as well, but I don't want everything to just die two weeks after I plant them (like what has happened in the past).

Kristin,

I am not the best scaper either, but I for sure agree with NowherMan6 that a nice branchy (not too chubby) piece of driftwood would look good and help giving the tank a feel of depth. And trust me, I know how hard it is to get a good piece, but you are in good hands with NowherMan6, he has a nose for driftwood.

About Asian plants: have you tried the advanced search on the Tropica Website? There you can select the continent as a search option.

About Ambulia: Very nice plant. I had it grow semi-successful in my 20G Long, equal height to a 10G (right? ), with 2wpg. Not the best plant for a low tank as it grows rather tall and will creep along the surface and shade other plants. That is something you should keep in mind for all the plants you select. Think about how tall they get, if they are tall then decide if you want them anyway (as it may look good when they creep on the surface), then decide where you would place them and which plants can be near by (in pariticular in the current as this is the area that would be shaded).

Hope this helps,

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

What are you doing as far as Nutrients, substrate and stuff

Nutrients are: Flourish, Flourish Potassium, Flourish Excel, all twice a week and the amount recommended on the bottles. I don't use nitrogen or phosphorous because my levels are where they need to be (~10ppm nitrate and ~1.5ppm phosphate).
Substrate is regular 3mm gravel. I use Flourish root tabs every few weeks.

will creep along the surface and shade other plants

LF, I understand that. I had a big bunch of rotala indica in the 10g before and I let it get too tall. It ended up shading my dwarf sag and alot of it died. My foreground looked so my better before...until that happened. That's the thing with alot of the bushy plants, like ambulia, you can't put many plants around them because they wouldn't get any light. I'm starting to understand that.

I will check out the tropica site, I haven't tried that yet. I did go to azgardens.com and looked at their plant habitat packages. There were a few different plants, but they had vals, alot of crypts, and rotala listed, which i already had.

I am so mad that my new crypts melted. I hope they come back.

Thanks guys...I'll let you know what I find on the tropica site (and ask more questions about them).

*Kristin*

Well my tank isn't completely Asian anymore. I got two ottos yesterday for some algae.

I have been looking on Ebay for a good piece of DW, but haven't found anything yet.

I have a plant list going in my head:
Crypt petchii
Crypt lutea
Java Ferns
Corkscrew Vals
Ambulia (gonna give it a try)
Taiwon Moss

And that's all I've got at the moment.

I wanted to find another background plant....but I haven't found anything Asian that will fit in my tank. Any ideas?


*Kristin*