Creating a glofish planted tanks

**tetrageek** · 10-03-2012, 08:17 AM

For those of us fortunate enough to keep glofish you might want to add some plants that look natural or would fit in with these glow in the dark fish. Sadly there are no live plants with these properties. Use a 55 gallon tank for this setup. For lighting, use black or blue light to bring out the colors of the fish. The best substrate I would use is a glow in the dark gravel if you can find any. You can use artificial plants, for best results, use plastic plants that glow in the dark. With this setup, you can create a "natural" glofish tank.

**mermaidwannabe** · 10-03-2012, 04:50 PM

I find the standard flourescent light that came with my aquarium brings out the brilliance of my glos quite well. By contrast, the tank at the LFS they came from has a bluish light and the colors of the glos in that tank are subdued and distorted.

**tetrageek** · 10-04-2012, 12:21 AM

A dark substrate might also bring out the colors but I've never tried this.

**Zander** · 10-04-2012, 12:25 AM

Originally Posted by mermaidwannabe

I find the standard flourescent light that came with my aquarium brings out the brilliance of my glos quite well. By contrast, the tank at the LFS they came from has a bluish light and the colors of the glos in that tank are subdued and distorted.

I agree with you on some of the fish. The purple light they use brings out the color of the greens and oranges, but I feel like it subdues the color of the red/blue/purple. The red one in particular. Under normal light it looks hot pink, under those lights it looks red.

**mermaidwannabe** · 10-04-2012, 12:50 AM

Sort of like putting a colored filter over a camera lens.

I wonder how many purchasers of glos are disappointed when they get them home under their own tank's lighting, to find they aren't quite the shade they saw at the LFS and were expecting?

--mermaid

**triplet 1** · 03-28-2014, 12:35 AM

Nice article; I have found that they now sell "Glofish tanks" - they are basically small tanks with blue lights on them. They also have Glofish rocks, which are black with various fluorescent colors mixed in. These look really great under blue lights, with or without Glofish.

**talldutchie** · 03-28-2014, 10:05 AM

I've seen some of those glofish tanks. I'd recommend to avoid these if at all possible. Despite the colours it's still basically a danio and they really don't belong in something shorter than 2ft long.

**Drew's_Fish_99** · 03-28-2014, 03:54 PM

+1 to talldutchie! I used to have some in my 20 gallon thinking they'd work well, they never did very well at all! They were either pacing the tank or hanging out in the back not moving. My advice would be get a decent size tank for them, go with black gravel, (I think black would make the fish pop more than the glow in the dark gravel.) and get a lot of glofish! They look very good in a big group! Also, if you can, I'd probably try to balance out the colors so there's not too much of one colored fish.