20 Gallon Planted Journal (! 56k)

Karackle

About 6months ago (~nov 2007) I decided it was time to take my 20 gallon out of the plastic and into the planted realm. I decided I wanted to make the tank look a little more sophisticated and figured I could either purchase all new silk and plastic plants, or spend the money on live plants, something I'd always wanted to try. I was also having trouble with water quality (WQ) and was losing fish due to a worn out bubbler that was no longer passing enoguh water through the small filter. So it was time to upgrade the whole system. Here is a photo journey from the start until now, and I will try to update regularly from here on out (this 20 gallon journal took a backseat to my 5 gallon tank which i started from scratch)...I hope you enjoy, and thanks for looking! Also...any suggestions are welcome!

Tank Specs:
20 gallon High tank
Regular aquarium gravel substrate
Marineland Penguin 100 Bio-Wheel HOB filter
18" 15watt fluorescent bulb

Flora:
Wisteria
Purple Cabomba
Anubias (on driftwood)
Small red Crypt
Large green crypt
A little bit of anachris that I might pull so I can dose with excel

Fauna:
3 female Bettas
3 platys
3 zebra danios
3 glolight tetras
3 neon tetras
3 guppies
1 blue dwarf gourami
1 clown pleco

My 20 gallon before "renovations" began:




After preliminary renovations:

Karackle

And moving into more renovations as the new filter began doing it's job and my WQ and tank had restabilized...

January:


February:


March:

Karackle

And some of the inhabitants of my 20gallon:

Lady Bettas (2 of the 3):




The 1 baby guppy survivor (he figured out how to hide out from the other fish and get enough food to grow!):


and my Gourami:


Of course there's more, but these are the ones who have "sat still" long enough for me to get half-decent shots of them! : )

tropical1

just kinda curious. i thought you couldnt put bettas together in the same tank? i new you couldl put them with other fish but not together.

Karackle

Generally speaking you can't put male bettas together in a tank, but females do quite well together and in community tanks.

Karackle

20g Update! It's getting a bit jungle-y on the left side, but i think the Crypt Spiralis (sp?) is growing in nicely in the middle (it's only been ~3weeks)

Here's a couple very similar pictures, I was wondering which lighting you think looks best in the pictures? (it's just different settings on the camera).

Let me know what you think about the tank and the camera settings or anything else!!! thanks, and enjoy!

nyrmel

I really like the color effect on the 1st shot. Any tips for how you took the pics camera settings to get that shot. I am starting my tank and hoping to get my first finned friends this weekend but I took a few pick of the tank with just the plants and would like to post them but havent had a chance I like the fish mix you listed it is about what I really think I want minus the bettas (would rather have fancy guppies if they will co-hab well) It really looks great. Live plants just make it look wonderful
nyrmel

Karackle

Wow, thanks for the kind words! I really appreciate the input! Yeah, I like my mix of fish, they do well together. I used to have a fair few fancy guppies in there, but when I had problems with my tank I lost most of them and once I got the tank happy again and went to restock, the fish store had some beautifully colored female bettas so I decided to go with something new But guppies work very well with that grouping of fish as well, so I'd say go for it. The fancy guppies come in some stunning colors as well :-D

For camera settings i'm still playing with what works best, if you go into settings and change the light setting to "fluorescent" instead of "auto" or "incandescent" that works quite well. I usually do the photos at night with all lights other than the tank light turned out to make it stand out. I've also played with some of the specialized settings and found that the dusk, dawn, and fireworks settings work pretty well (i can never remember which works the best). Also, I turn the flash off, put the tank a stool (i don't have a tripod) and then turn on the auto timer to minimize blurriness.

Good luck!

nyrmel

ill have to give that a shot dont have a stool but i got a chair. Of course this means I have to figure out how to work my camera as well (so much to learn ) but it is funny we have almost the same gravel color too (only I dont have the purple in mine they didnt have enough to do the whole tank when I went to the store)

Karackle

I was away for 3 days last weekend and my roommate accidentally left my fish tank lights on the whole time and unfortunately there was a lot of plant die-off in my 5g, BUT my 20g apparently had enough nutrients to sustain the extra growth from the added light and they grew like crazy! My crypt spiralis (or balansae) was pearling like mad when I got home. My large anubias (i realized it's probably an anubias and not a large crypt wendtii) in the front grew a whole large new leaf in the past week!

Here's a couple new pics of the tank:




Would it look better if I pulled out the purple cabomba and moved the large anubias to the corner where the cabomba is now?
Here's a close-up of that corner:



And I finally got a clear and decent picture of the blue female betta:



Any input, feedback, questions, comments, or concerns would be great!

Nyrmel - Hahaha yeah, i had to learn the ins and outs of my camera a little bit too! And i realized the fluorescent vs. incandescent etc. settings are under a heading called "white balance" not "light settings" as i previously mentioned. Silly me!