10G Hex Planted Betta Community

[MrJG]

I figured its about time to start one of these to help keep track of the tank progress as well as getting some advice/pointers about things to work on next.

First I'd like to say thanks to all the folks that post here. I've read so much information on these forums thats has been helpful from the point of cycling the tank all the way to trying to figure out which nutrients to dose the plants with without test kits (still workin' on that one though).

On to the tank. It was set up on our betta's (franklin) 1 year birthday to give him more room and better living than the ol' betta bowl. Set up in Mid-June 06 with a proper cycle using zebra danios.

Tank:
10 Gallon Hex
Satellite 18W Compact Fluorescent w/ 50/50 Daylight bulb at 10K&6.5K
Top Fin 10 Filter
Visi-therm stealth 50W heater
dosing 1ml of flourish every few days
dosing 1ml excel every few days
No CO2

Plantlife:
Water Wysteria
Red Ludwiga
Java Fern
Mondo Grass (I know this isn't truely submersible its coming out soon)

Fish:
Betta
2 Neon Tetras
2 Harlequin Rasboras
3 Zebra Danios
3 Ghost Shrimp
1 Otocinclus catfish

These are my current water parameters after 1 week with no water change...
PH: ~7.8-8.0
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrites: 0ppm
Nitrates: <5ppm
No KH or GH readings yet with a drop kit.

A few older pics I took back in December when there was only an 8W fluorescent bulb on the tank.


Now some newer pics from yesterday with the new upgraded lighting. Removed several types of plants before the upgrade and trimmed the day before so its a little sparse in there now.

Front:


Left:


Right:

[MrJG]

Rasboras:


One of the cleaning crew:


Pic of the redone hood. Hacked the back of it off and cut plexi-glass to drop down into the grooves. Thinking of cutting a glass piece to replace it with.


A few notes on future plans:

The lighting just got upgraded this past weekend. I'd like to remove the mondo grass and attempt to grow some kind of ground cover. Thought about micro sword or dwarf sagg but I'd like to have something closer to the ground. Think this is possible with my lighting and no CO2?

Upgrading the filter is pretty high on the list right now. Since this was bought as a "kit" I'm sure there are better performing filters out there.

For those who might have read the "adding a heater question" thread I posted a bit back... water temp is now up to 78 Deg and holding. All of the fish are doing great.

I lopped the tops off of the wysteria in an effort to get them to grow in thicker, I replanted the tops.

I'm backing off adding the excel for a bit. Been dosing 1ml every two days for a week and starting to get a little too much algae growth.

Think thats it for now... Thanks for looking and I look forward to reading what everyone thinks.

[Helena21]

Very very nice tank, i LOVE those pebbles, makes it look really natural

[Guysy1110]

Good lookin tank youve got! Like the natural look

[Fishywishy]

omg.......IT'S OSCAR!! we had a betta just like that, he was a mean son of gun though

love your tank, my 11 year old said it was kewl! so 2 thumbs up!

[tropicalfish]

Very nice!
You should raise the water level.

[S-kate]

Beautiful tank! I really like the lay out a lot. it looks very natural.

[IDunnoWhy]

Thats a nice looking hex, very natural, Great Job!!

[CAPSLOCK]

Looks really nice, I bet it'll look even better once those plants reach all the way up again. I'd replace the plexiglass with real glass, I've used plexi as a hood before and it's a pain because it keeps warping.

[TheFighterFish]

Nice tank.

You can definately tell the benefits of the CF lighting. It's more green and the plants look great.