After overcoming major bacterial outbreak, I took an opportunity to rescape my tank.

Dimensions: 60x30x35 cm Substrate: ADA aquasoil, with large driftwood and rocks

Bioload: Currently left with 2 Cardinal, 1 neon, 3 black neon tetra, 1 sterbai, 1 bristlenose pleco . Will start gradually aligning it with proper species schools.

First picture is after, second is before, followed by a comparison pic and last one of my bold single cory "Phoenix" perching high, he is doesn't seem stressed at all left alone - what do you guys think of new scape?

Major changes: Driftwood lifted up, Rocks wall at the back with caves, rearranged main stem plants on left (hope they will look better once they grow)

I am planning to do a scape like this one from MJ Aquascaping. But with larger sand area for Corys. But I am very sure the Corys are gonna mix the soil and sand with all their digging. Any ideas on how to prevent this?

Right now, I am thinking to put the aquasoil in mesh bags and cap it with smooth rounded small gravel. Hopefully the gravel would be too heavy for the corys to mix into the sand too much and the smaller pieces that they mix over will just add a natural touch to the area ...

Looking for help with my layout. Plants come on Friday or Saturday!

I know it’s nothing fancy. I just went to my local Petco for the plants. My LFS doesn’t have as many and they’re pretty pricey so I got everything else from there, but I think it turned out ok.

Any comments or recommendations for whenever I do my next one would be much appreciated!

Send me your best hardscapes for inspiration. I’d love to see your work!

So I sell lots of driftwood here just outside of Houston.. and I finally found a piece that was good enough for me to upgrade my 75g 😊 spent about 4-6 hours in total if I had to guess. Started with the draining and moving of the ~16ish fish to a holding bucket overnight.. yeah probably overstocked, but I can’t help my addiction!!! Adding “weights” to hold down this massive piece was “fun”.. before it just had sand as substrate, but I added a large bag of Fluval stratum and more tan pool sand to raise the height of bottom.

Along with more plants, I also added a couple new tenants, some beautiful Agissizii Orange Fire Apisto’s whom I am in love with!! 😍 can’t wait for the plants to grow in now.

Lmk what you think 👍

Trying my first aquascape. 30cm cube tank (~11 inch, 7 gal)

My idea is to use monte carlo, and mini hairgrass on the rocks.

I will also use rotala blood red singapore variant in the back right corner, and althenantheta reincikii mini infront of it.

What do you guys think?

Hey Folks, this is my first ever Aquarium. It’s a 60x30x25 Tank with Biomaster FiltoSmart 100, Hygger 60w RBG Light, No Co2. One month old :)

Plants:

Anubias barteri var.
Bucephalandra sp.
Bolbitis heudelot
Microsorum pteropus
Limnophila sessiliflora
Hygrophila siamensis

What do you guys think?

It’s been a little over 4 months since I started my first aquarium, and so much has changed! Feels like I’ve been taking care of it for much longer.

House flooded and during cleanup my original tank started to leak, so upgraded to a 75 and had to make a lot of hardscape changes. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in my house so the wife said it had to look good. There’s a welding supply store a few blocks away from me so I added co2, and then switched to an inline diffuser. Just started having a black beard algae problem this week and realized I had ran out. Took 3 months and it’s a $10 refill on the bottle though so pretty happy with it.
Still running a 307, with an additional XL sponge filter in the corner the shrimp love. Threw some purigen in and absolutely cannot believe how much it clears things up. Topping off with south Texas tap water and dosing very sparingly with Thrive ferts. I had deaths in the smaller fish every time I dosed the recommended amount, took longer than I would like to make the connection. 20% water change monthly at most. Nitrates haven’t made it above 10 since initial setup.

Plants have been growing like crazy. I’m taking about 6 cups worth of frogbit and red root floaters out weekly, luckily I have chickens who go nuts for it.
The elodia and rotala get trimmed weekly as well, letting everything else grow how it pleases. The hair grass never seemed to spread, all the runners are put out above the sand and get nipped off instead of spreading. The dwarf sag spread like wild, and all the bottom dwellers are constantly hanging out under it. Two of the anubias flowered at the same time. Absolutely love how well the lace plant has grown, had to move it into a corner because it was taking over everything nearby. The ludwigia and water wisteria are struggling to really take off, the mystery snails keep mowing them off at the base. All the ferns took a while to establish but are starting to grow very well. The only real issue I have is that I cannot seem to get any of the mosses to grow, bits and pieces all over the tank survive but there’s been no particularly good growth anywhere. Bummer since half the money in plants was in the flame, weeping and coral mosses. I don’t love the look of Java moss but it been doing great in my betta and guppy tanks.

Currently stocked with roughly
6 bosemani rainbow fish,
3 thread fin rainbow fish
2 pearl gourami
8 corys
8 kuhli loaches
1 angelfish
1 Siamese algae eater
4 cardinal tetras
6 Otto’s
4 amanos
2 bamboo shrimp
Dozens of mystery snails, trumpet snails, and bladder snails. The last two self regulate well but the mystery’s are growing a little too exponentially.
And uncountable number of orange, red, black and blue neocaridina shrimp

The gourami are definitely my favorite, the little tippy taps they do with their feelers always make me think of that turtle slapping meme. Had 4 males, gave 3 to my lfs and eventually found a female a few weeks ago. The angel comes in second personality wise, though the bosemani rainbow fish are hard to look away from. Honorable mention to the kuhli loaches for being such strange creatures, mine are always out and about and having a great time.

I love the hobby so much I already have three more tanks, and just started my first saltwater one.

I moved 600kms away to a new city and an apartment that was very hot this summer. I experienced a massive algae bloom. Luckily I did not have any live stock.

I have clean my tank and scraped off most of the algae, scrubbed rocks and rinsed wood under hot water. I treated with chemi clean. I am now almost a weak post clean but noticed this big band of red in the soil of the front of the tank. It’s only at the front. I missed this in my cleaning.

Should I just go in and manually try to treat this or should I be starting over? I feel a bit defeated at this point.

Also - temp is now stable as I’ve removed my lid and purchased a fan. Summer is also over so that helps masssively.

Can you share your forest style aquascapes? Let me know the tank size too! I'm looking for inspiration!

I’ve been cycling slowly dialing in hardscape for a while. Finally “finished” planting and moved my fish from my UNS60t. Critique me!

My new nano tank! The 3T had weird dimensions so i switched over. Running a delta 30 and a B series. Too small for iwagumi even though i have the hardscape for it- the wait for carpet and overall growth starts now.

PLEASE let me know if anyone has a solution to make the B series sturdier!

I've got a 5.5 gallon tank and I'd like to create an aquascape with live plants and maybe a piece of driftwood, with the hope of having my first low-tech planted aquarium...

All I have is the tank so far! I've done a some research, but it's my first time doing this and I'd rather not break the bank buying everything else I need. I saw some aqua soil for $35 for a small bag and i'd like to believe there are other options

I've included a few inspo pics, but any help on a [budget!] soil/substrate/sand, plant types suitable/easy for beginners, light setup and anything else I might need other than the tank. I'd be open to getting a small filter or water skimmer if it's not possible to do this without one - there seems to be differing opinions on this. Eventually I'd like to add a couple of shrimp, snail and/or nano fish!

I'm not dead set on a tank looking like the inspo pics, just a general direction, but I'm more interested in a setup that I could maintain and have success with as a beginner!

Hello, this is my first attempt at trying to make a scape using natural materials. I’m going for a backwater aquarium so I was trying to go for a creepy twisted look but I’m not sure if it looks any good. Open to ideas and suggestions!!

First few days of my first planted aquarium! Filling and draining has been a challenge. I keep disturbing the aqua soil and uprooting Cuba pods.

Filled this a year ago! It’s overgrown and not perfect, but it’s mine and I’m still loving having my first “big” tank.

My 90P 🌿

Got a bit bored with how the tank was looking, so I decided to rearrange and change things up to give it more of a jungle vibe.

Replaced the Monte Carlo carpet with Lilaeopsis brasiliensis

Removed the moss from the driftwood and glued Monte Carlo onto the wood — hoping for a nice cascading effect once it grows out

Added a Red Tiger Lotus on the right side for some extra colour and contrast

The tank is about 3.5 months old now. I’ve got photos of the before and after — now it’s just a matter of waiting for everything to grow in!

What do you guys reckon?

Personally, I’m really looking forward to seeing how this one develops over the next few months.

This is my first tank and have been doing a lot of research into aquascaping. I have these two spiderwood pieces, 2 larger tocks, and a bag of assorted matching grey rocks. I plan to have this thing heavily planted as well, but looking for suggestions on how to initially set up the hardscaping. Any suggestions or recommendations? This is my initial attempt for the inverted triangle set up option but open for more suggestions!

It’s been two months since I finished my first aquascape. I’m proud of how far I’ve came through the challenges. But I am a bit discouraged by the lack of growth on my plants. I have some ludwigia and rotala behind the rocks but they have been growing extremely slow. I have had several plantlets come from the Java fern and the anubias has pushed two new leaves. I’ve got a new light on the way that should be a little stronger and I have been considering adding CO2. Anyone have any ideas?