Help me stock a new easy going 5 foot tank

Im in the process of downgrading from 3 tanks to 1 and need some help in putting together an easy to maintain 5ft community planted tank. The plan is to have something where I don't need to do weekly water changes and can go away for a week or two and a fishfeeder will keep the finned friends happy. I only have a bristle nose left from the previous tanks all the others were given away so its a clean slate.

TLDR: The aim is easy to maintain lightly stocked with plant friendly fish and easy plants.

What would you do if you wanted to put together this tank?

 

I would go with Shrimp, tetras, rosabaras and netrites and then slow growing plants(no hornwort, valis imo)

 

I have 2 ideas, kind of.
1: Guppies with nerites and possibly Amano shrimp. Stick with some light coloured gravel or sand to keep the pH stable and not affected by an active substrate. Lots of epiphyte plants (bolbitis, java fern, anubias etc), something like a Red Tiger Lotus and let the leaves reach the surface to give the guppies some cover and starve the algae of light. You could include some cryptocoryne species too if you place some root tabs near to them. Big central piece of driftwood with some scattered rocks around the base. This would be pretty simple to look after, no need to spend a massive amount of time on maintenance, and should give plenty of activity to the tank.

2. Amazon community. Get some active substrate (Langa, Amazonia etc). Stick with fewer, larger species of plants. Lots of Amazon swords, bigger Crypts, a few stem plants like Rotala Rotundifolia or Limnophila Aromatica (no Hemianthus Micranthemoides, this stuff grows way too quickly even in a low-tech tank). Also include the same epiphyte plants i mentioned in idea 1, just fewer of them. For hardscape i'd make it a U-shape or Concave layout, with a big open space in the middle, and lots of driftwood and rocks off to the sides. For fish stocking, i'd go pretty simple - 20 corydoras, 20 green neon tetras (which school amazingly), some otocinclus and Amano shrimp. You could also get a colony of Cherry Shrimp going too, as nothing will predate them too much. A possibility would be some kind of feature fish, like an Apistogramma pair. This will probably need some kind of fertiliser dosing to keep up with the stems and Amazon swords, but a few days of neglect won't hurt it.

Both tanks should be pretty easy going, and will have lots of movement and contrast.

 

I've had a few tetras/rosabaras over the years and always liked them. Shrimp will also be cool. Thanks will definitely keep them as an option.

 

I have some anubias Nana, Java fern(on driftwood) and a sword that I've been keeping alive in pool filter sand with osmocote that need to move over. My thoughts are to keep the main substrate inert but have areas of active substrate (not sure if this is practical?)
I must say I'm not a big fan of stem plants, I'm happy to go with the slower growing stuff and let them fill out over time.
I'm going to look at all tour suggestions thanks for all of them.

 

If you are not in a rush to fully stock the tank, start with a few plants and 10 x shrimps of one variety that you like, dont go caradina species as they wont be as easy as the Neocaradinas.

im not so sure about the gravel mix, but if you already have the normal gravel, I know you can put a layer of soil then top it, just not sure what soil.

I have foudn that dwarf hair grass is also low maintance to keep.

Oh and a school of coreis are always ncie as well, and otos if you can find them

 

Perhaps consider rainbows. A group of Boesmani rainbows is stunning and will spawn in the mornings once mature. Dwarf rainbows are nice too but in a 5 ft you'll need a big group.

Together with them, a few torpedo Barbs and since it's planted SAE's which help with algae.

A pair of pearl gourami for the upper layer.

Cory's for the bottom and maybe a pair of Rams or Kribs.

 

Crypt forest on inert substrate, anubias glued on a nice big hardscape. Both plants are slow growing. Nothing that might shed and block a filter. Clean up crew of cories, khuli loaches, your pleco, nerite snail, ottos, neocaridina shrimp, some amano shrimp. One or two big shoals of relaxed small fish like cpd, chilli rasbora, small tetras. Lol now I want a new tank

 

i personally would have slow growing plants(buce, java fern,anubias, java moss, crypts) like what @JPB said with some floating plants to help with the nitrates also maybe one type of fast growing plant like valis to control water quality a bit and give some depth to the plants, you can always remove some valis plant if it gets out of hand but in inert sand it should slow down the growth, for fish i would say large schools of nano fish, you could do a variety of rasboras , some ember tetras, and even some CPD's . or you could do a large school of lemon tetra's and large a school of Neon's (this will have your blue, red, and yellow colors in tank ), bottom dwellers you could do lovely school of corydoras (i personally like panda's), and clean up crew you could have a few sae's, nerite snails , and 24k Neocaridina shrimp

 

You guys aren't making it easy to stick with one tank

I quite like Boesmani rainbowfish(had some dwarf rainbows before) CPD's are also beautiful and never had them.

I did manage to get the tank in its spot though and decided to split the substrate in the middle of the tank. Currently I have a big bag of Langa soil on the left and some black sand on the right. I'm going to need at least one more bag of Langa and a few kg more of sand. But the tank is cycling at least and I have some time to pick up a few goodies over the next few weeks(added some filter media from an old tank so should hopefully speed up the process a bit)

 

WOW that's a beautiful tank.
Thanks for the suggestions, I seem to have gone down the rabbit hole a bit with the substrate and bought some seachem flourish as well. Problem is the tank only has 3 20w led tubes. So I also need to keep that in mind.

 

I moved some javafern on some wood over from one of the old tanks. Water is super milky at the moment so photos are hard.


I also had 5 ppm nitrate this morning so I believe the old filter media has assisted with establishing a nitrogen cycle.



I'm going to keep adding a few fish flakes every night to keep the cycle going and then check how the ammonia and nitrate are doing at the end of the week. Other than that I'm hoping to pick up a few plants over the weekend and start getting a feel for things. I also need a nice piece of grape vine or other "spider wood" but I'm not sure where I can get some around centurion...

 

I've started getting a list of things together to work towards and bought some plants to get a start. There was a bit of a messup so couldn't pick up the last bag of Langa I need to finish the substrate/hardscape so will hopefully get that during the week.

I'm going to start with these plants and then add to them as time goes on:

? Java fern (previous tank)
? Crypt Parva (previous tank)
1x ? sword (previous tank)
2x Echinodorus marble queen
1x Echinodorus grandiflorus
2x Echinodorus harbich
3x Crpytocoryne – Beckettii

Next the shrimp and snails:
9 x amano shrimp
11 x cherry shrimp
3 x nerite snail

Then for the fish I'm aiming for 24C but heres where things get a bit hard. The easy ones are:

1x bristle nose (previous tank)
9 x ? corydoras
5 x Otocinclus OR 1 x SAE

Then for the middle/top I like the following but I don't think they will be OK with the shrimp?
11 x Serpae tetra
11 x lemon tetra
7 x blue rainbowfish

 

Mmm I was actually thinking about Otocinclus when I put down 5 will fix that thanks.

I originally had CPD's instead of the serpaes but I'm not sure if the bigger fast rainbowfish will stress them out too much. Could maybe go with cherry barbs as they are a bit bigger.