My first tank, part 2

[Niku-M]

I went to some local pet stores today to buy some plants having run my tank over the weekend. I've managed to find some Vallisneria Spiralis and Lysimachia Nummularia. The people who worked at these stores told me that they didn't have any floating plants yet because the 'season' for selling pond plants has not started yet. :( I bought the Vallisneria because of this because they their leaves float creating some shadow. I wanted some other species to add to this and I considered a moss ball but I thought my tank would be to small... my only alternative is Monosolenium Tenerambodum to add on a rock but I couldn't find it.

After spending 2 hours trying to get my plants to not float back up (yeah I suck), it looks like this (front, side view) note that my tank looks much smaller like this then from the top because of (I assume) the thick glass, and image quality sucks because I want to be friendly to bandwidth:

940

941

Now what I want to know is if this provides enough shelter for fish/shrimp. Also, what do you think about the background (which is just my wallpaper), should I add some background to make the fish feel more comfortable or would they probably be fine like this?

Also Hobbs I read in your Stickied tips that when I have live plants in my tank I don't have to do a cycle, with a link to an article about this but the link returns 404 :(. I was planning on starting my cycle now but should I now just not do it and add some fish like coming Wednesday?

Oh sorry another thing: I read somewhere that ghost shrimp eat plants. Is this true and will they devour my plants?

[Chrona]

In a moderately-densely planted tank, you don't have to cycle. With your plant mass, I would say it depends on what kind of fish and how many. What kind of light do you have on that tank?

[Niku-M]

I'm planning on a small school of white clouds (about 4-5).

It's a regular 25W light bulb, which I figured isn't too much but the tank gets some additional light from my window (indirect sunlight) and my other lamps.

[jeffs99dime]

looks pretty good

[Chrona]

You could probably add one at a time without having to cycle, with a few days in between each. I would still recommend fishless cycling though.

[Incredulous_Ed]

Looks pretty good! In my experience, ghost shrimp do not eat plants.

[Drumachine09]

Killer!:thumb:

Thats a cool tank. I like the rounded corners.

[Niku-M]

I've been trying to get some affordable test kit around here but it's hard. One LFS only had separate packagings of testers that were like 10 euros each. I'll see tomorrow if I can buy some stuff online (though it's really hard to stay under 30 euros, but I guess with all the free stuff I've got so far that's not too bad.)

I wonder if anyone else has encountered this, but during setting up this aquarium (especially because it's cold water I guess) people are getting on to me like: "just put those fish in, don't spend so much money bla bla". Which I find insane and really annoying, I'm not going to let some tiny fragile fish swim in a rather small space with toxins. Even if they're white clouds.