Aquarium Update – Driftwood and Live Plants

My aquarium has undergone some major changes in the past couple of months. I’ve been constantly tweaking it to make better looking, functioning, and self-sustaining. I’ve been maintaining it quite heavily since I know the changes I make stresses out my ecosystem. I’m constantly checking the water quality, doing small water changes when necessary, and also observing my goldfishes behavior to make sure there aren’t any signs of stress.

I know a ton of people are thinking and some are also telling me to leave my tank alone. “Let nature do it’s thing,” they tell me, but as a new hobbyist, I can’t be helped! I’m learning so much that it’s hard not to give my aquarium all this attention! I’m pretty proud that my tank is quite natural as well. The only thing I add to the water is aquarium salt and water conditioner. My filtration system is made up of sponges and ceramic bio media – that’s it. I do have a few plastic aquarium decorations in my tank, but I plan to eventually replace those with something natural – rocks, driftwood, live plants, etc.

Here are the transition of my tank… I didn’t take photos every step of the way because I was always “in transition”, but these are the gist of it.

First:

Second:

Third:

One of the first thing I did was remove the tree trunk on the right side of my tank. My goldfishes LOVED playing around it, but it has many sharp and jagged edges that hurt them. It had to go!

I also had to take out a ton of the gravel. Zoro is MUCH slower than the other two so if I didn’t put enough food into the tank to let a few of them drop to the bottom, he’d never get any. With the gravel being so large, food would easily fall through the cracks and be unreachable to my. So it, too, had to go.

A piece of driftwood was added to my tank last week and the other was added last night. I attached a piece of Anubis to the piece on the left and Java Ferns to the piece in the middle. I’m planning to add a few more plants. Maybe another Anubias to replace the plastic plant on the right and hopefully some that will float freely in the tank. Not sure what I’m going to add yet, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to grow some lilies. I’m not sure if this is possible since I have a tank cover and overhead lights, but I definitely want some plants sitting on top of the water.

I’m gonna have to take a better picture of my tank when I get home. Probably a photo with faster shutter speeds so the bubble wall doesn’t look so crazy ;P

Just wanted to do a quick lunch update! I hope everyone’s holidays are going well!

Bye 🙂