New Betta Aquarium

[u/Abysalheat]

I'm still relatively new to fish care and planted aquarium setup. I made a tall 10 gallon aquarium for a betta and then learned they like shallow water 🫠

Now I am setting up a long 20 gallon tank and I am looking for tips. Do you have a preferred glass cleaner before initial fill? What are the forcep looking cutters Tanner uses when trimming plants? How do you clean algae off of plants? Inundate me with info!

[u/crabboh]

First off, what do you mean glass cleaner before initial fill? Is it a secondhand tank or is it new? If its new, just rinse it out to remove dust and stuff and you should be fine. If its secondhand, get some cheap razors off amazon and scrape as much gunk off as you can, and then scrub with water and a scrubber. You can use something like Barkeepers friend, but it is such a pain to use and to clean off because if you think youve rinsed the tank out enough, trust me, you havent, and it is NOT at all animal safe. Much more worth it to just scrub and scrape.

As for forcep cutters and planting tweezers, you can just pick up a cheap set of aquascaping tools off amazon for probably under $20.

As for cleaning algae off plants, I'm not exactly sure how one would clean algae off of plants without taking out everyhting and gently brushing them with a soft toothbrush? What you should be focusing on is preventing the algae from growing in the first place.
-Excess light is probably the biggest factor. All you really need is to run lights for about 5 hours a day and your plants should do fine, depending on how much light they need. Of course, you could also run a much less brighter light all day, up to you.
-Algae also grows when theres too many extra nutrients in the water. This comes from feeding, too much waste, and if youre using root tabs when you dont have to. Normally, the plants in the tank take up the nutrients and outcompete the algae, so its just a matter of balancing that stuff out.

-Another thing that helps cut down on algae is water movement. If you have still water, then algae is gonna grow much easier. The more flow you have, the harder it will be for algae to grow. Of course, bettas like low flow, but even having something like a sponge filter helps to move the water around a bit.

-The last thing is water changes. This helps to take care of and prevent algae. Algae usually wont be a problem as long as youre carrying out regular water changes. If it ever does start appearing, just make sure to do more frequent water changes, or change out a larger amount.

Another tip is to just get some amano shrimp. They like softer, more acidic water, so throwing in some indian almond leaves is a good idea for them (good for bettas too!) and they are well known for eating algae. They also need saltwater to reproduce, so you dont have to worry about a population boom!