Planted Aquarium HobbyOctober 16, 2009
Many people keep fish tanks. A lot of people have kids who keep fish. I’ve kept fish around since I was very young, but I have never enjoyed aquariums as much as I am enjoying them now.
When I was quite little, we had a 10 gallon fish tank that had colorful gravel, lots of sea shells, plastic plants, and a water wheel air stone. Our fish actually survived pretty well as I recall, but I was too young to remember when we first got the tank. We were the typical kids with fish.
I tried my own tank when I was in my early high school years, but I had terrible “luck” (lack of information, turns out), and my fish all died. I kept a few bettas, and they survived okay in their little bowls, but they didn’t hold any particular facination for me.
When I got into college, I began keeping fish again. This time, I asked questions at the fish store, and after a few failed attempts, I managed to keep a few fish alive. I then bought more fish, and they all stayed alive. I liked them around in my office, but when I got married and we moved to Duncan, I began to lose interest again. My 10 gallon tank would get completely covered in algae, and I would sometimes go six weeks between water changes. (Amazingly, my 8 fish survived this treatment.) It got to the point that I decided that I would scrap the fish tank as soon as the present inhabitants died. I hated cleaning that thing.
Then, I stumbled upon a blog called aquatic-eden and was absolutely amazed at what can be created in a fish tank. Planted tanks are any tanks with live plants in them, and aquascaping is when you use plants and hardscape (rocks and driftwood, typically) to create a work of art. Aquascapes come in wide varieties: they range from model mountain ranges complete with trees, grass, and rivers, to aquascapes endemic to a specific habitat. Some are miniatures of a scene, like a lone tree by a creek bed with a flock of “birds” which are actually very small fish. It’s just amazing what can be done in an aquarium.
I was absolutely blown away by the pictures! Do a google image search on Takashi Amano and you’ll see what I mean. He is a renowned aquascapist, and had a huge hand in making the hobby popular.
I’m not going to jump into making fancy landscapes. I redid my substrate from epoxy-coated gravel to pea gravel, seachem flourite, and pool filter sand. I’ve added a lot of plants, and most of them are doing very well. A few didn’t work out, but I believe it’s because my water parameters are probably much different than the sellers from whom I buy the plants. I have very hard water and a ph of 8.2.
Here are some transformation pictures of my 10 gallon and my 37 gallon tanks:
