prairielilly

The attached pic is of my 20g as it currently looks, with 3 pieces of bogwood and 7 silk plants. I've had some aggression issues with my DG recently and was considering adding more tall plants, to give my cherry barbs and panda cories more places to hide out. What I was thinking was take all the thin-leaved tall light green ones and move them to the left side, put a new tall bushy plant with lots of leaves on the right side by the air stone, and leave everything else as it is. My only concern is I tend to put too much stuff in my fish tanks and I thought that new scheme might be too 'thick' (although it still leaves lots of open swimming room). I want it to still be easy to clean and not overcrowded. Thoughts?

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katetnies

i would suggest adding a dense plant. maybe something like rotalia

lew2000

Very nice tank. Instead of putting in more, what about moving the bogwood and plants a little closer to the foreground. That way they will have more room in the back of the tank. BTW how do you like your silk plants? Since i am an old dude now, and i went through all the different tank type/bio-topes, i have set up all my tanks with silk plants (no more CO2 or lighting issues) i can get a lot of color and shapes without having to worry about low light/no light so far 3 years - and they are better quality now> Sorry to hijack your thread.

katetnies

i personaly am not a fan of silk plants. they get dirty fast. however i guess they are not half as hard to clean as plastic plants. my tank now has only real plants and they seem to be doing well. i dont add anything special to the water nor have i changed my lighting. my tank runs on a carbon filter

prairielilly

LOL I had to google rotalia...sort of limited by what's available for sale at LFS and within budget. There's a few I'm considering, they'll be the same height as the light green tall one but lots bushier.

Thanks I love the silk plants. I had all plastic when I started it up in november and then decided this would look more 'real' and be less likely to injure the fish. I had some nasty disease issues when I started out (newbie!) and so now just want to concentrate on keeping the fish healthy and happy without having to worry about plants...someday in the future maybe. This works well for me for now. If I added the new plant the bogwood would come closer to the front. You don't think it would be too busy though? when I had the plastic plants there was no free gravel at all...I tend to stuff them in there...

lew2000

Yeah, i tend to do the very same thing and want a lot of plants, and since i love house plants and keep alot of those as well. Two of my tanks could be called "very busy" with plants - but i guess it's wether you are a minimalist or ? I essentially laid out my tanks with the center having mopani wood, and put plants all around. As long as the fish can school and hide and have and area they can swim freely they should be okay. And since i have tanks for me (my wife and son aren't into them) and i and the fish are happy, then i don't worry about the arrangement of the tank. What i have to resist is adding more plants and redoing

prairielilly

me too...hence this thread...To leave well enough alone, or continually 'improve'...ah..

I've also got two more of those low big-leaved plants from the foreground, currently in my 5g that I'd like to put in there. I see lots of tank pics here where ppl have relatively few plants and it looks great. I however like it lush (I know the barbs would appreciate it too), but I don't want to overdo it.

agabr123

i think it looks great as is, sometimes you just have to resist the urge to move everything around all the time

prairielilly

Thx Alex

After reading/writing this thread today I spent some time just relaxing and watching my fish swim around...I figured that if the barbs or cories were stressed or needing more hiding spots they'd likely always be in the plants. But they're not, they're happily swimming all over the tank, the barbs spend most of their time at the top actually and the pandas are well, everywhere, and as for the DG he's just either chasing whichever fish has most recently gotten in his face or continuing his eternal quest for food...

The panda with fin rot is healing up nicely and once again challenging the DG over bits of wafer, so it seems all is well and relandscaping is not required.

Guess that settles my question The feedback is muchly appreciated though!