My first aquarium, no method just a 10 G with lots of plants.
The Art of Aquariums
Tank History / Explanations
10 Gallon tank:
My first tank was a 10 gallon tank that is a fresh water tank that I set up back in 2018. Sadly did not research much in regards of aquascaping styles, just knew that I wanted only natural materials, as in a design sense I am a naturalist. This 10 gallon was the spark that lighted my passion for the hobby. I only got the tank because of a solid black/white dragon scale betta that was the most interesting fish I ever had, he would swim into the palm of my hand during water changes like he was wanting to play.
20 Gallon Iwagumi:
This has to be one of the most difficult to sustain but in my personal opinion one of the most aesthetically pleasing freshwater style aquariums. The design originates from Tashaki Amano, which strongly exhibits the Japanese esque design. The core prinicples are as follows; only hardscape allowed is rock, only plants are carpeting plants. This creates an open design that must be filled in with rock to achieve the golden ratio for the tank design.
75 Gallon Fresh Water:
This was my first big tank and first time facing the struggle of trying to “fill out” the tank. This made designing it a challenge, I wanted a jungle river look, so I used egg crate light defuser to create some structure for the sand bed and built up a bank roughly 1/3 the height of the tank. I would use this as the tail point for the golden rule and use wood & plants to reach the 2/3 height of the tank on the other side of the tank. Little did I know that the plants would grow much higher in the tank and cover the wood. A redesign with different wood pieces was needed to achieve this look. This was definitely my master piece in the fresh water hobby, where I felt like I achieved all the goals I wanted to accomplish
20G Salt water:
This tank was a tester to see if I wanted to breach into the saltwater aspect of the hobby. I was initially interested once again by a particular fish, a black and white snowflake clown fish. This fish has a slight blue hue to the borders of the white sections which the camera just canoot even capture let alone do it any justice.
65G Marine:
This is where I first dived into the marine section of the hobby and wanted to go big enough to expand and grow into the tank. The initial thought with this tank was to go with a Macro algae tank the assist and excess nutrient build-up. One major faults of this tank that was not considered was the difficulty of obtaining Macro Algae as they are not as common in the hobby. This is how I ended getting coral, after months of scouring the internet in the midst of Covid, I gave up and got some soft corals as they are easier to keep and can still live harmoniously with Macro Algae.
65G Mix Reef Tank:
When you look at the final form of the 65G tank it is hardly a mixed reef in the sense that it has 1 single Euphyllia coral, a Hammer coral as the rest of the coral are soft corals such as leathers, zoa’s and the gorgonian sea fans. With this I change I got some tangs in the tank to assist with algae control. While this tank needs time to grow out I don’t think this is the end of my time in the hobby as I still dream of a clown harem tank with dozen’s of anemones.