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Here are my favorite entries from the 2013 Aquatic Gardner Association’s yearly International Aquascaping Contest in the category of less than 28 litres (~7.4 gallons)
I love going through the AGA contest entries they have posted online here. Really studying how the plants, hardscape, and fish combine to form a complete aesthetic balance has been helping me form ideas for my own tanks!!
Gold barbs (Puntius semifasciolatus) are one of my favorite new additions to my 150 gallon tank. I had been looking for options of yellow freshwater fish. The first mention is always a yellow lab (Labidochromis caeruleus), also known as the yellow or electric yellow cichlid. While considered one of the most docile of the cichlids, they still would not mesh well with the peaceful species already in my 150 in terms of temperament and ideal water parameters.
It was actually a tank posted by a redditor /u/Geekphysique that first inspired me to give gold barbs a chance. Here’s a shot posted on reddit via imgur:
I love this 70 gallon tank, but that’s a story for another post. There’s also been a ton of work done on this tank’s lighting system, and /u/GreekPhysique has posted many discussions of the changes this tank has gone through. Here and here are two different videos posted showing off how the barbs move (and how beautiful the tank is!).
The related tiger barb is a semi-aggressive fish often noted as being a fin-nipper. Since I had only ever really seen tiger barbs in my area fish stores, I had assumed that other barbs were just variations of color for the most part. Luckily, I looked into gold barbs further to find that that they are great community fish! Furthermore, they shoal, so a group of them can often be seen swimming together somewhere in the tank. And gold barbs usually stay in the mid levels of my tank, which have been rather empty looking. (Near the surface I have pearl gourami and angelfish. Near the bottom I have 11 kubotai loaches and some bristle-nose plecos. I have a group of giant danios, but they are so quick and not bright or flashy enough to really be a focal point. Suddenly it seemed like gold barbs would be a perfect fit for my tank.
There were two main reasons why I insisted on living in a house this year. (1) Get a dog and have a nice yard and (2) get a ridiculously large fish tank. Given that I’m in grad school, many of my fellow students rent apartments or live in multi-level buildings where dogs and fish tanks that weigh as much as a full water bed would not be allowed.
I bought that 150 gallon with stand and hood (with T8’s… upgraded those immediately) for $5oo on craigslist. It wasn’t in phenomenal shape, but it was and is mine. My biggest regret was not paying enough attention to realize we’d put it down with the majority of the scratches on the front pane of glass. Given that it took five people to move, and that this mistake wasn’t noticed until after hardscape and water were in place, it’s something I guess I’ll have to live with.
Anyhow, here is my original hardscape:
Here is the tank after a few rounds of adding plants, adjusting some of the hardscape…
And here is my tank today, about six months after the initial setup:
There’s more work yet to be done, and plenty more growing before I’m really happy with the tank. The hardest part of it all is the waiting. Stopping myself from trimming and rearranging constantly was one of my hardest tasks….at least until I got so many other tanks that I don’t have time for much else.
My World of Planted Freshwater Aquariums 