Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => General Fishkeeping advice => Topic started by: bferg4 on March 02, 2015, 01:11:15 AM
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So after a month wait, I finally have this tank in my possession. No idea what I will stock with, but have decided on a sand substrate and am going to try my hand with live plants and some wood as decor. Any other suggestions/ideas for how to decorate are welcomed :)
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Of course, there are lots of things you can "decorate" a tank with, but my opinion is that plants and bogwood, maybe some rocks, are all that is necessary. There are those who like to have wrecked cars, sunken galleons or whatever but personally I find those extremely "tacky". There's no accounting for tastes, though.
You will probably find difficulty in growing plants with a pure sand substrate. They are much more likely to succeed if you have a proper plant substrate under the sand, either one of the expensive special media you can buy, a cheaper alternative of pond compost or (like me) the free soil from your garden. Whatever, plants have a much better chance than in pure sand.
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I prefer a more natural look in my tanks, aside from the fake skull I have in one tank which I considered removing until the Kribs made it their breeding ground.
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I'm sure that in nature quite a few fish have made real skulls their breeding ground :)
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What about plants that can attach to wood?
And for using soil underneath the sand, how much should I use? As in how deep should it be?
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Plants that attach to wood, Java fern and moos etc., would be fine as they don't need any substrate to root in.
For soil, I put about 3 cms, with about 2 cms of sand on top.
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Just to add to the list of plants that can be attached to wood - anubias (several species) and bolbitis.
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I got a plant yesterday, stauro (something) repens. It's planted in sand in one of my established tanks, so will see how that gets on. Was thinking of using that, any bias and amazon sword for my new tank with wood and slate as decor.
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I would echo java fern and anubias to attach to wood. I have a lot of this in my tank (see below). I also like the natural look with sand ;D
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/Sullivan6d/Fish/22CB5BF1-5D9A-47F3-BDD5-200B097D728E.jpg) (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Sullivan6d/media/Fish/22CB5BF1-5D9A-47F3-BDD5-200B097D728E.jpg.html)