I recently redid my 50 gallon, here are some pictures of the plants about a year ago, and the size of them now.


A picture of some assorted Cryptocorynes, and my 'Oriental' sword.

and this is the recent picture of the Sword, and a branch off of the same type of Crypt.


here is a picture of when I first set up my 50 gallon in mid 2003.


(sorry about the quality, it was taken with a 30.00 digital camera)

and this is my 50 gallon as of 12:00 last night. (which is when I finished it)


This picture was taken right after I put all the plants in and filled it up.

and here are close ups of the tank. from left to right.

I'll post the rest of what I did when I can take pictures.

Comments on how it looks, and how I can make it look better are greatly helpful and useful ;)

Thanks,
Tyler

Oh, and I want to know, is it normal for an aquarium to hold over 100 snails? I cleaned every thing to get rid of the majority, there were over 100, I just stopped counting. I had an abundance of string algae, could their presence have triggered it?

for this setup, I cleaned every thing except the filter. I got rid of all the trumpet snails (which was the majority of the snails) be cleaning my sand in a wheelbarrow and a screen with a lot of water. scraped off all algae off intake tube, glass, wood, plants, and even the sand.

After taking every plant out of my aquarium I realized how much I really had in there. I found some plant that were alive under the over grown Crypt forest I had in the center before. I found Dwarf Hair grass with a chain nearly half the size of my aquarium, Sadly they only have one leaf per plant so far. I'll show pictures of that later.
I think I have some sore of narrow leaf chain sword, or other plant like it. (i'm not sure I ever bought Narrow leaf chain sword, so not too sure where it came from LOL.)


Sadly i lost my Wood Shrimp, I believe my angel ate em' but I would have thought I would see that...sadly he is not here any more.



I'm taking suggestions for a good ground cover for low lighting, because I would really like a carpet.

The snails and hair algae are indicators that theres plenty of food thats not being eaten by the fish and the snails thrive on it, also the algae grow from the nitrate it releases. However im not necassarily saying its bad that it is there, otherwise it would be in your water posing a threat to your fishes health, its just as well that the algae is using the excess up!

Most tanks have some snails, they seem to love gravel and do less well in sand, this is because in gravel they can burrow and hide fantastically well during the day, and come out to feed at night, with sand its really easy for your fish to dig them up!

Two ways to controll snails naturally is to introduce a fish that will actively seek them out and eat them, like puffers, raphael cats, loaches and geophagus cichlids.

Or, add a variety of snail you WANT early on in the tanks life, this snail will populate yoru tank and deny other species food, as yours is already established. Most snails in the aquariums we see are malaysion trumpet snails

Trumpet snail

I like to use the freshwater ramshorn snail as its large, easy to remove if thers too many (my raphaels in the other tank love em) and actually look quite nice

Ramshorn

the other advantage to these guys is some varieties are available in cold water sections of out door aquarist stores!

Looks good Tyler, can't wait to see it when it grows out a bit!