# 10 Gallon Journal - "Betta Haven", my first planted tank



## i love planted tanks (Apr 27, 2008)

one word beautiful great job....lush and green


----------



## Bugman (Jan 7, 2008)

1st planted tank? Wow! Great job. What a pleasure it must be to sit and look at.


----------



## mizu-chan (May 13, 2008)

This is an amazing tank, especially since it's your first.
Very impressive, and I'm so jealous of your hair grass. lol.


----------



## wayneside (Jun 17, 2008)

very impressed...looks beautiful!


----------



## youareafever (Mar 18, 2008)

nice tank, the bettas dont kill each other? every female i ever had ripped each other apart to peices.


----------



## orion2001 (Mar 15, 2008)

Thanks a lot for the compliments guys. I'm glad you'll liked it. If you have any suggestions for the background/stems for my low-tech setup do let me know. I just finished moving my tank to my new place. It was quite a bit of work but was made easier by this contraption I made a few weeks ago:










I drained out 80% of the water in the tank and got all the betta girls out. The 3 otos were left in there. It worked quite well for the purposes of moving and made life a lot easier for me. I'll keep this thread updated.

@youareafever
Female bettas can be kept together (called a sorority tank) although it requires some care and effort to ensure a working sorority. The girls can be aggressive towards each other but having plenty of cover in the tank for them to hide in along with enough numbers (atleast 6-8) helps things remain peaceful. I would refer you to this informative thread on keeping sorority tanks:

http://www.ultimatebettas.com/index.php?showtopic=12193

Male bettas on the other hand are extremely aggressive and should never be kept together. Males are aggreassive to both other males and females.


----------



## Walking_Target (Jul 16, 2008)

Orion is right on the money. 

Properly managed, you can keep females together


----------



## chase127 (Jun 8, 2008)

wow that contraption is smart :thumbsup:

and wow thats your first tank? amazing job! wished mine worked out half as well.


----------



## Karackle (Dec 11, 2007)

Wow, well done! Beautiful tank! And i too am jealous of the hairgrass! 

I have 2 female bettas in my community tank (it used to be 3 but one passed when I had some kind internal parasite problem in the tank). The only aggression issues I had with them was towards male fancy guppies, so I stopped keeping guppies in that tank. So yes, it can be done. And perhaps i'm just lucky, but in smaller numbers even than 6-8, it's my second time keeping female Bettas in a community tank, last time it was 3 also.


----------



## wyfdfd (Aug 3, 2008)

amazing too. learning...


----------



## Sticky230 (Mar 30, 2008)

nice job man. those cheap hoods with crew in bulbs rock. for a ten gallon, you convinced me to stop looking at coralife and go with one of those.


----------



## NeonFlux (Apr 10, 2008)

Very nice job on your first tank. I'm impressed


----------



## fish_fasinated (Mar 30, 2006)

heaven that is! beautiful tank, makes me wish i was a betta.


----------



## will5 (Sep 30, 2005)

I love the look of your tank great job. :red_mouth I do think the the betta's throw of the scale of your tank though. Not that I would remove them now.


----------



## orion2001 (Mar 15, 2008)

Thanks for all the compliments and comments guys. Sorry for not replying earlier, grad school has been killing me these last couple of months! 

Will, I do agree that the bettas do throw the scale off, but as much as I love planted tanks and aquascaping, my betta girls come first =). This tank was specifically made for them and I made sure to give them tonnes of hiding places and nooks and crannies to explore and they seem to be really happy in here.

@Sticky230: Yep, the cheapo hoods with spiral CFLs work quite well for small tanks. One thing I will say though is that the lights don't seem to penetrate down to the substrate very well so they aren't well suited for 'high' types of tanks which would probably benefit from T5s.

As for updates regarding the tank, I've moved it again to my final new place (I had to move it to a friends place for 2 weeks while I was in between leases). I'm relieved that the tank is still in one piece and the fish and plants are doing great. I have completely backed off with the Excel dosing and have now converted the tank into a complete low-tech tank which won't be having any water changes. The plants are still doing well although growth is a lot slower.

The anubias and java ferns are sending out quite a few leaves and the rotalas and bacopa are growing very slowly but steadily. I had some issues with GSA growing on some of the unshaded Anubias and Java ferns. I fixed the problem for the most part by switching my lighting down to 2x10Watts of CFL. I'll post updated pics soon.


----------



## SpeedEuphoria (Aug 5, 2008)

Very nice tank!

I love the low tech methods.

Are the 10w bulbs your using now spiral(pigtail) or tube shaped or U-shaped?


----------



## Karackle (Dec 11, 2007)

Sounds like all is well with the tank, glad to hear the plants and betta girls are doing well despite the double move! 

Can't wait to see updated pics


----------



## orion2001 (Mar 15, 2008)

The current 10watt bulbs are screw-in U shaped bulbs although I had been using spiral bulbs previously (15watt and 20 watts during emersed growth). I might actually switch these 10watt bulbs to spirals since I don't like the 5100K color temp on my current bulbs. I'd prefer going to 6500K.


----------



## Hedda (Aug 25, 2008)

Gorgeous tank. :thumbsup: It's amazing it's your first one. This is pretty inspiring, as I'm just getting started with a 10 gallon. 

Looking forward to the updates.


----------



## orion2001 (Mar 15, 2008)

Well you guys convinced me to quit being lazy and take some pics . Here is a FTS along with a couple of macros of my betta girls. As you can see, the Java fern has been doing really well as has the anubias. The stems are growing, but pretty slowly and the background still looks quite messy. I'm still focussing on propagating the stems till I have more. Then I'll go ahead and try to scape with them.


----------



## markopolo (Jun 2, 2008)

Not only is your tank incredible, but your photography is as well. Im amazed that you can get such great pictures of your fish!! what type of camera do you use and what settings because i want one!!! :biggrin:


----------



## hungtran10 (Jul 5, 2008)

Hello,

Your tank looks amazing. It really filled out well. The java ferns really adds to the height of the tank. I really should have done the emerge method to fill out the middle and foreground in the beginning like you did. I saw the article on Tom Barrs website but I was too impatient and wanted to get things planted and filled ASAP. Hahahaha. 

Your fish tank shots looks great btw. Do you have a male betta in the tank and if so do you plan on trying to breed them? I have one male betta but he is very timid which I find odd. He tends to hide most of the time in the plants at the bottom of the tank.

Can't wait to see more updates soon.

- Hung


----------



## orion2001 (Mar 15, 2008)

markopolo said:


> Not only is your tank incredible, but your photography is as well. Im amazed that you can get such great pictures of your fish!! what type of camera do you use and what settings because i want one!!! :biggrin:


I actually borrowed my roommates Canon Powershot S3 IS for taking these pics. It has an amazing supermacro mode for taking pictures up to 0cm focal length (meaning you can have the lens pressed right against your subject. Most of these pics were taken in Manual mode, using the Super macro feature and playing with the focus and distance of the lens from the glass (I was pressed right up against the tank). It takes a lot of patience and tons of crappy pics before you get some nice ones 

I would highly recommend the S3 IS, I own the S1 IS which is nice but lacks in the ability to take good macro pictures. If you'd like to take some good pics and get into photography but cant yet justify the cost of full fledged DSLRs then it is a great camera to try. Also, I wouldn't get the S5 IS and would stick to the S3. The S5 went up in megapixels without really using a larger CCD sensor which results at more noise at similar ISO levels as compared to the S3.

I hope that helps. I'm no expert at photography although I like messing with my camera and try to take nicely composed photographs


----------



## orion2001 (Mar 15, 2008)

hungtran10 said:


> Hello,
> 
> Your tank looks amazing. It really filled out well. The java ferns really adds to the height of the tank. I really should have done the emerge method to fill out the middle and foreground in the beginning like you did. I saw the article on Tom Barrs website but I was too impatient and wanted to get things planted and filled ASAP. Hahahaha.
> 
> ...


Haha, I hear you man. I had to wait almost 2 whole months before I submerged my tank...that was really painful! In retrospect though I wouldn't have done it any other way. To grow out such a lovely hairgrass foreground, especially in a low-tech tank like mine would have been extremely hard, if not impossible. 

As for the fish, they are all female bettas. Males shouldn't be kept with other males or females (except when breeding) as they are very aggressive towards others of their species. The girls are pretty fiesty too and it takes some effort to get a 'sorority' betta tank up and running. Having lots of plants and hiding places along with a fair number of them (6+) helps diffuse tensions and prevents them from fighting (Except for the occasional nipped fins).


----------



## hungtran10 (Jul 5, 2008)

Are you planning on adding more fish species or inverts?

- Hung


----------



## Tex Gal (Mar 28, 2008)

Lush tank! Great hairgrass! Wonderful girls!


----------



## orion2001 (Mar 15, 2008)

hungtran10 said:


> Are you planning on adding more fish species or inverts?
> 
> - Hung


Well the tank is pretty much fully stocked if not a tad bit over stocked. I have 6 betta girls as well as 3 otos in there. I don't really think I have room for any more. I guess I could get away with adding a couple more since the tanks is so lush, but I think 6 girls seems to be working pretty well.


----------



## kb46 (Sep 5, 2008)

Wow - your hard work and research has really paid off! Lovely tank.
(I can remember you starting over from posts on a different forum.)

Kylie


----------

