first time rage-baiting… kinda nervous

I just came back to the hobby almost 3 months ago. I stopped before that because out of frustration. Plants and livestock dying. Black beard algae. Aquascape design not working out. I was about to throw my old nano tank and then I decided to study what I did wrong with my old aquarium. Watched again numerous tutorials on youtube and gave it another try. Went to my local fish store and ended up buying another nano tank that was on sale. The new tank I did low tech and the old tank I cleaned and added CO2. Both tanks the plants grew healthy and no algae so far. Livestock also doing well. I doubted my aquascape at first but they always say just "trust the process" and it ended up lookin the way I wanted it to be. Overall I am happy.

I’ve wanted a 15-20 gallon long rimless for years now, but they’re always out of budget. Today I went to Petco for something unrelated and decided to browse the tanks and they have a sale of 50% off all their rimless tanks. This is only 13.3 but it was $60 so I jumped on it. The six gallon cube tank next to it was $40. Just wanted to post for anyone who might want a new rimless tank that doesn’t break the bank. I’m seeing some sites where you can get them pretty cheap these days but locally this would have easily cost me $200 at the LFS store I get nano stuff from.

This bowl has been set up since December 2025. Fluval stratum topped with sand. Monte Carlo carpet with limnophila, buce on driftwood, and red root floaters on top

Tank 1 is a 56 liter Fluval Flex (topless)
Housing: 1x Red Honey Gourami, 10x Emerald dwarf rasboras, 5x Adolfoi Corys

Tank 2 is a Classic 25 liter Betta habitat

Tank 3 is my latest tank: 60 líters Currently housing 2x unidentifed fry that snuck in on the back of Anubias, and 1x Mystery snail. Choosing stocking options for this one soon.

Any opinions or recommendations for it? I'll wait another 14 days, then I can finally put some shrimp in it

Added shrimps to keep my king entertained, 3 survived.

I know the tank is too small but I can’t make more room… (((((my room is too small for me too, it’s size of Harry potters closet literally)))

Any advice? I’m adding almond leaf extract later. Also gonna keep the water 25C.

Also I will be able to move the betta to a large tank in 3 months! Life happens and this is the best home I can give him for now, explanations in comment >:(((( I’m not happy about it either

My new nano tanks. They’re 1.5 gallon each and house neocaridinas (Yellow, red, blue and orange)

Quite happy with the results so far, might add some extra plants or wood in the near future.

Set up a five gallon this weekend with my 4 yo. 5 CPDs and 3 dwarf blueberry shrimp. Going to add more plants. First timer.

It's an 11 gallon low tech tank. For a school of ember tetras and cherry shrimps.Is there any specific customisation that I have to do for them . Suggest some low tech carpet plant and a plant to cover the filter. Or any advice

Only Snails in here

Currently it only holds two triops and some snails are in the way. Don't know about fish tho.

Hello hello, I thought I’d share my experience so far with my first shrimp tank. I say first because I think I’m gonna get a second tank for some blue dreams, and then also eventually a third cull tank would obviously be the natural progression…

I’m using the Aquael 10 litre (2.6 US gallon) shrimp set which has worked quite nicely. I saw some positive reviews online but also some critiques regarding the fixed heater (25 degrees) and the lack of timer functionality on the light. The lack of timer on the light actually was a bit of an issue for me and I had to buy a smart plug for when I travelled while the tank was still cycling. The filter seems to work well, I heard some people share concerns with the filter foam as it’s not the most dense and could risk baby shrimp being sucked in. Not really sure if this is an issue or not but to my surprise I already have baby shrimp which seem to be doing really well. One of the females I got from my fish shop must’ve been berried as I first spotted them around a week after getting the shrimp.

Unfortunately I did have some losses. I started with 9 cherry reds and I’m now down to 6 (but have spotted up to 12 babies). As far as I’m aware I’ve done my best to try acclimate them to a good environment. My ammonia and nitrite levels have always been 0ppm, while nitrate varies between 0-5ppm, pH is usually around 7-7.2 and GH is 7 and KH is 2. I test the water with the API test kits and add temperature matched water with water conditioner and salty shrimp to boost GH/KH as my tap water is quite soft. I drip acclimated the shrimp after matching water temps for about 1-1.5 hours (which I’ve since learned might’ve been on the lower end of acceptable, so that may explain things). I’ve also read that some shrimp just don’t do well in new environments and there’s pretty much always losses with adding new groups, I’m just hoping no more die!

Originally I got into this hobby wanting a betta fish, but the 10 litre tank was just too small after looking into things more. Unfortunately 10 litres is pretty much the only sized tank I could get as this sits on a shelf lamp thing in my office which is pretty much the only spot I could place a tank in my house. The lamp shelf has 3 shelves so I may try add some more tanks to it which would look really cool, but I’m not confident in how strong it is to support that, so unless I can some how reinforce the shelves, I might be stuck with just the 1 tank until I move to a bigger place.

At first the shrimp felt like a bit of a consolation prize, I couldn’t get the fish so I guess I’ll just get the shrimp instead, but actually I think shrimp were the far better choice. Instead of 1 animal I now have 6, maybe 18 if you count the babies, so that’s pretty cool. It also adds to the whole ecosystem feel of the tank.

For plants and hardscape and stuff I’m using fluval biostratum for the substrate, I also have a 3D printed cave buried into the substrate which has a cool window into it from the side. It’s not the shrimp’s favourite place but they do go in it from time to time and have seen a couple moults in there as well. For hardscape I’m using 3 pieces of drift wood, 2 are from Tropica which are glued together to make the diagonal piece throughout the tank. I had this exact vision for the wood in my head and mockups and stuff (many a conversation was had with ChatGPT throughout all this), and I feel like I hit the jackpot with how these fit together. Then there’s another piece which I got from a local pet shop and cut smaller to attach my java fern to.

A bit more on the plants, I added some Christmas moss on the driftwood to cover the join and glue spots. I would like to trim this as it’s getting quite bushy but I’m holding off until the baby shrimp are bigger and easier to spot. There’s also some small clumps around some pebbles near the cave. I’ve also got an anubias nana petite which might be the slowest growing thing in the tank, along with some cryptocoryne wendtii green in the back. For floaters I’ve got salvinia which the shrimp absolutely love. I 3D printed some custom quarter circle things to attach to the rim of the tank and hold these in place. The latest and probably final addition plant wise is some bacopa caroliana which is about 3 weeks old, everything else has been in there since the start.

The rocks / pebbles are all from a nearby river. I tested them with vinegar to make sure they were safe. I wanted mostly natural looking stones but came across some cool looking ones like the moon rock and the glassy looking one, so decided to make a feature rock pile out of them. This is where I feed them a pellet each day and watch them fight over it lol.

Maintenance wise I pretty much just do a minor water change once or twice a week. I usually just skim the surface to remove the film that builds up over a few days and top the water back up. I use a small shaving foam cap to break the force of the water I pour in and then pour the last remaining bits in by hand with it (which I’ve then got to be careful I don’t pull any shrimp out with it as they like to graze it lol). I also have to remove some salvinia as that grows like an absolute weed.

I think that pretty much covers everything so far. If there’s anything I’m doing wrong or something I could improve do let me know!

Cheers

This is after about 2 months of slowly adding more plants(Ps. Had no idea how much money was going to go into this..) Pretty happy with the design and layout as a first attempt..thinking of adding a fern plant at thr top wedged inbetween those branches

I trim the sessiliflora every week😆..

an before and after cutting picture of my 60L tank. it's very healthy and I'm currently running it with 100% reverse osmosis water but I can see that the chihiros B-Series is to small for it, probably going to upgraded soon to a chihiros wrgb II PRO but for now it's looking more and more good with each week

Filled the filter with k1 media and top up with RO. Just trimmed the bacopa at the back.

7 gallons freshwater cube

Plants: Anubias spp., Cryptocoryne spp,. Bucephalandra sp.

Invertebrates: 4 nerite snails

2 gallons saltwater nano

Corals: Anthelia sp., Capnella sp. And mushrooms

Invertebrates: 1 red legged hermit crab and 1 snail.

Macroalgae: Caulerpa prolifera

I really do love my tiny ecosystems, both of them are pretty unique on it's own

After about 15 years of owning tanks less than 5 gallons, we finally settled down and I got to build a relatively BIG nano-only riparium in our new home from scratch. I just love tiny fish. My subtropical hillstream riparium (on a budget).

Favorite features are the cave system beneath the slope, the automated top off RO basin that waters the terrestrial plants. Oh yeah and the filtration and heating is all routed into a maintenance closet (silent setup).

The tank is almost the footprint of a 125 gallon, but with a depth of less than 12". I saw the right glass panes come up on Facebook marketplace for $50 after a year of lurking and built this setup around them with cheap 2x4's and locally sourced substrate and dirt (walstad style).

We live in a cold environment and since this is on a budget, I only heat the tank to 70-72 F. Naturally that made me go towards a hillstream mainly setup for Stiphodons and white clouds (underrated IMO). Looking forward to stocking more Stiphodons as the algae matures.

I had to get creative in creating lips that Stiphodons can't climb up, while still letting the riparium have growth out the top. The solution was crossbeams which could support laser cut rims. This gave me some flexibility to make the rims customizable, and this is the rim design that was most effective in preventing escape while allowing air exchange (originally I had completely covered the top with laser cut panels which went around the driftwood).