Pic 1 now, pic 2 before.
What I changed:
-Switched to another filter (the last one randomly broke)
-no more shrimp (they moved to a shrimp tank)
-SOOOOO many more plants (added 5 new ones and removed 2 old ones so now I have 8 in total). Two of them came with driftwood 🙂
-change the carpet glass from seed ones (they kept uprooting and clogging my filter) to tissue culture mini hair grass that I'm hoping will spread.
-A castle and I glued sponge and Jave moss and Flame moss to it hoping they will grow and give the castle a mossy look. Also the castle had a little cave.
-I no longer use floating rings to keep the floating plants (Salvinia cucullata) in one place, but rather used a floating ring around the filter's rain outlet so the floating plants won't get pushed down and stuck somewhere down there.
Also do I need CO2 tablets for the amount of plants I have in there lol. I mean the only inhabitants here is one Betta and a few snails.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1ogb1jp
Posted by Reverie_DayDreamer
3 Comments
I think tank 1 is cooler for us, the viewer, but tank 2 is better for the betta which is what’s more important (thats what they say is more important)
Edit: I was referring to tank 1 as pic 1 and tank 2 as pic 2. I honestly think the castle one looks way cooler, but it does look crowded in there.
I don’t think you need CO2 at all.
You might want to have some of those liquid fertilizers during the start so plants can stabilize quicker. But CO2? Nah
I made a tank similars to yours. I just tweak the bioload by adding some snails, the extra ammonia does come in handy when you have a lot of plants.
You do not need CO². And if you used it you’d most likely need to up a bunch of other things. You have plants but not the kinds or amounts that warrant pumping carbon in for. What’s your light? A proper light matters most but imo I don’t think many are that great for Bettas depending on the tank but lots of floating plants help. You can have loads more plants and it takes a while before maxing out with how much proper light you need and then needing the CO² for that. I have a 5 filled with many plants, including a few colorful ones- inert substrate but root tabs where needed, a liquid fert that I don’t use to increase nitrates to recommend levels, and a decent, although not even my best, light. It’s 6500k and white but it apparently does a good job (it came with a tank so it’s kinda shocking lol). A good light will get you some color on some plants but most lights should support what you have well and if we over light we get the algae(s).
Plant in the back left corner- heads up, I’m 99% sure this is not an aquatic plant. Did you order it or know what it was called at a store? It looks like a plant I got at my LFS and it was like a big bush. Unlabeled and for a long time, without seeing all the plants that exist, I thought it was some kind of ludwigia. Then it made big spores that dropped and well, that was weird lol. I had mine ziptied together and suction cupped to the top of a tank for fish cover- like a floating plant. It grew long drippy aerial roots and looked great for a while- I LOVED it but it stopped growing and then leaves would just slowly melt one at a time. Shopping for other plants, I ran into it and yeah not an aquatic plant and that explained a lot. It does worse when it’s actually planted into the substrate (it won’t grow). It’s called alternanthera bettzickiana, so if you look that up you might find that’s what that is. So sorry if I’m not properly identifying the plant but the leaves look just like mine (I removed what I had when it got gross and planted it so it is now a houseplant).