# [Wet Thumb Forum]-The newbie journey



## catfish (Apr 17, 2003)

OK guys, I don't plant to dazzle anyone (especially with my horrid photography). This is my journey from plastic to real plants. My goal was simply to grow more plants then dead ones.









This is a 6 gallon, no CO2, low light Eclipse 6

My first plantings in 2001:










After algae attacks, cyrpt melts, substrate change, new driftwood and some removals, this is the tank today:










I'm proud of my nanas. They were so tiny in the first picture!


















My next mini tank is starting up when I will attempt to actually aquascape.


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## catfish (Apr 17, 2003)

OK guys, I don't plant to dazzle anyone (especially with my horrid photography). This is my journey from plastic to real plants. My goal was simply to grow more plants then dead ones.









This is a 6 gallon, no CO2, low light Eclipse 6

My first plantings in 2001:










After algae attacks, cyrpt melts, substrate change, new driftwood and some removals, this is the tank today:










I'm proud of my nanas. They were so tiny in the first picture!


















My next mini tank is starting up when I will attempt to actually aquascape.


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## MarcinB (Apr 16, 2004)

I really like the second photo. I love the darkness of your tank







IMO the only thing that you could do to improve the look of your tank is putting some stem plants on the left side of the driftwood (?) Your nanas are really beautiful, I can't see even a single spot of algae, congratulations.

150L (40G) aquatic garden
photo available here:
www.bsk.vectranet.pl/~marcinb/akwa2.jpg


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## JamesHoftiezer (Feb 2, 2003)

I think its a great example of how to change/start a small tank.

Are you going to keep on the green theme or start adding some color?

*James Hoftiezer

Tank Journal - Aquascape ( Latest / Archive )
Tank Journal - Parts and Construction ( Latest / Archive )*


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## catfish (Apr 17, 2003)

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Besides a small knob of my driftwood that is almost touching my light, the tank is algae free! I'm a frequent water changer and I acidently introduced some ramshorn snails with a plant. I manually pick them out when I do water changes to keep the population down and they don't really eat plants enough to bother me- they seem to only munch older ratty leaves.

It's hard to add color in a low light tank. I'm going to experiment with some sunset hygro and see how it goes. I'm changing the bulb to a better one (aquaglo to a powerglo), so I hope the hygro can tolerate it.


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## Birgit & Wolfgang (Feb 5, 2003)

catfish, I love that second photo. I can imagine how it will look when the plants have propaged even more. It will look fantastic. DonÂ´t do any changes, just wait until everything grows really dense (of course that will take some time in a low light tank). It will look very much like a rainforest plantation!

www.naturaquarium.at
view some of our pictures


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