The Puffer Forum

So I have my two lovely schoutedenis and adoring them, they have some shoaling fish and bristlenoses. They have had live plants up to this point but genuinely considering going plantless.

Reason querying if possible is due to my terrible terrible luck with live plants. Back in the day when I didn't know what I was doing plants thrived, now I have everything and give good nutris/ferts etc they just melt, or produce holes or grow blankets of algae.

When adjusting one thing it throws something else out of balance. So do you guys have any plantless tanks for inspiration?

I need to keep line of sight broken up for the goodness of the puffs but what have you guys tried?

My Duboisi puffer digs up anything I plant, and he even killed some Anubias attached to a rock while he was hunting, so I just have a little java moss with spiderwood and zebra stone. I can post a pic if you want

Nothing wrong with fake plants--silk look surprisingly real!

lilacamy931 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 17, 2018 2:43 pm Back in the day when I didn't know what I was doing plants thrived, now I have everything and give good nutris/ferts etc they just melt, or produce holes or grow blankets of algae.

Now I have to ask the obvious question: why don't you go back to your "back in the days" ways?

pufferjw - love to see a pic

pufferpunk - i might have to see how silk look, they must've come a long way.

gkai - fairly good point perhaps me knowing too much and trying to adjust is too much.

lilacamy931 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:35 pm gkai - fairly good point perhaps me knowing too much and trying to adjust is too much.

Forgetting everything is not really what I meant. More like how about revisiting how you did things back then? If you have more trouble with plants now than before, it's a good idea to check what you changed in the way you maintain your tank since the good old days: did you change place and have different water type? lighting system? like fluorescent->led, or different exposition to direct sunlight?

More water change? less waterchange? Type of soil, if any?

My suggestion would be to check what you changed, especially keeping in mind the Walstad (aka El Natural) method. As a beginner, it is quite likely you had a more or less natural tank, and then as you gained experience went away from that. Many people have success with this simple method, or with the full aquascape high tech method (CO2, ferts, ubercontrolled water parameters,...). It's more in-between methods were plants struggle...