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Natural style aquarium


Lanshark424

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Hey there everyone, I have a 65L tank with 2 German rams, 5 glowlight tetras, 5 Pygmy Cory’s and a bristlenose, I was wanting some suggestions on how I could add some more hiding places for my rams so that they feel a bit more comfortable in their home, I have a few ideas but want to see what other ideas people have put there, I am planning on sticking some plants to the cave they have now and a few more in the ground possibly, the tank looks a bit yellow but don’t worry it is clean haha. This is my first post so sorry if it is in the wrong place 😂

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Welcome Lanshark!  You could try having the driftwood on a different angle so it's sitting lower on the substrate, at the moment it's very open under there and also it looks kind of unnatural.  Other than that just more plants and/or wood.  Your java fern will provide plenty of cover when it gets large.  I managed to find a little piece of driftwood on the beach which makes a perfect fish cave.  I like the yellow water (and I'm sure your rams do too).

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A quick update with what I have done so far, I bought a few plants that I liked the look of, have no idea if they will be good with the tank but I don’t mind a bit of trial and error, the rams seem to be coming out a bit more as well, I read another forum post about carbon in the filter (my filters main media was carbon as that’s how it came) but after reading it I have 2 different thicknesses of sponge, filter wool, ceramic noodles and ceramiscrub, going from noodles then into the different sponges, biggest to smallest, then through the filter wool, then the ceramiscrub and back into the tank. Over all I think it is working a lot better, but I was also wondering if I should put plant fertiliser into the tank for the plants or if the fish waste should be enough??

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Anubias nana stays short and is basically foolproof, and fairly slow growing so pruning is rarely needed - it is usually attached to driftwood or rocks.  Dwarf sag is a grassy type plant that is fairly short and is supposed to be easy to grow, though I haven't grown it myself.  Rotala rotundifolia is a stem plant that is very pretty and not very demanding, it will need regular cutting and replanting though.

When the water enters your filter it should first pass through your coarse sponge, then your fine sponge, then your filter floss, then any carbon or other chemical media if used, then finally your ceramic noodles.  Your noodles come last to keep them extra clean, to avoid clogging up the pores in the media where the bacteria do their job.  It sounds like you have the noodles first in line?  I don't know what ceramiscrub is, but the order you want is mechanical > chemical > biological.

Those extra plants look really good where you put them at the back, they've filled the tank out nicely :-)

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Cheers 😊 I went for a walk on the sand spit but didn’t manage to find any bits of driftwood I like so I will still look around for those, I might plant some dwarf sag on the little cave thing I have in there to hide it a bit or I was even thinking of putting java moss on it, I started feeding my rams blood worms and they have got a bit more colour too then but they still hide away in that back right hand corner of the tank so I need to get some more places for them to hide and they will hopefully come out a bit more, fingers crossed

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