Aquarium makeover.

[Gabrielle_AnimalLuver]

My aquarium is extremely blah right now. (yes blah is a word :p ) My platies, pleco and rats (yup, rats) ate most of my plants. Also I went from about a dozen platies to 2. The fry disappeared..probably eaten by someone. My foundation adults all dead now. I think it may have been a spine curvature disease or wtv it's called. And my only 1rst gen baby, over a year old at the time, died as well. So I have just 2 left. I think their both female, so no breeding. My pleco is never to be seen and my Betta passed recently.

So yea, my tank is pretty baren right now.

1rst thing's first, I need to replant it. My aquarium store doesn't have any anubis or java fern, the local pet shop sucks and there was no one to be found in the fish section to serve me, so stormed out empty handed after 15mins.

Once I eventually manage to replant it. I'd like to repopulate it, but I'm not sure with what. I know I want another betta but I feel like he ought to be the last addition so he doesn't get all territorial when I add new fish. I like my playties, they have great colors, and having babies was always kind of fun. Sept they eat EVERYTHING! They ate my freaking apple snale! They eat the pleco's food. They poop up a storm and they are questionable with the betta. The 2 I have now must have been stunted or are inbred cause they are half the size of their parents but the full grown adults were nipping my betta's fins at one point and never gave him a chance to eat. So I'm thinking of doing something a lil safer like a tetro or rasbora or minnow. But I don't think I can mix schooling fish, like I'd have to wait for these platties to kick it right? And who knows how long that will be, maybe not for another year. I could set them up in my spare tank with a few more platies but that would mean buying an extra filter and heater sad

Anyway, suggestions welcome/needed.

1. List of betta compatible tankmates

2. List of easy plants that don't need a ton of sunlight. (I'm actually moving downstairs in a month or two and will have very little natural sun light.  

[Celestial Fireflies]

I love, love, loooooveee the way Neons look in planted tanks. I'm also a big fan of rasboras, especially the way they seem to school more towards the top. I like the dynamic it gives the tank.

I'm a big fan of the amazon sword, I know some people don't like it but it's always done very well for me. It's also a fairly low-light plant. Cryptocoryne is another good one, for beginners. Anachris has a nice feathery/bushy look to it, so it makes a pretty good background plant-- grows easily and doesn't require too much light. Aponogeton Crispus can also be a good choice, it needs mediumish light, but it can grow in low light conditions.  

[Gabrielle_AnimalLuver]

I'm leaning towards rasbora. They have a bit of nice pattern to em. And they are smaller than platies right? So I could have a few more and my tank would look a little more lively. Could I mix them with platies? What about danios?Would it be a terrible idea of I got a male platie? Like would it be bad for any of the fish if I had fry in the tank?  

[Frozen Mist]

Ive had neon tetras with my beta, but they started nipping at his fin so he murdered them all 1 by 1 >______>

Panda cories + African dwarf frogs have worked out very well. The beta seems kind of afraid of the cories (he flees when they surface) but they stay on bottom of the tank generally so they're out of eachother's hair. When I had them in a smaller tank the frogs would try to n** the betas fins but they have clumsy aim and are slow compared to the beta. All in all the group has worked out pretty well.

I did try guppies at one point but they were ridiculously aggressive towards eating the betas fin so that didn't work at all. I'm kind of leery of any small schooling fish with a beta because everyone Ive tried tried to eat his fins.  

[Gabrielle_AnimalLuver]

So um...I found these tetras... Called lamp eye. They're really neat looking mrgreen erm, so I just. Went ahead and bought 6. And so far so good I mean my platies don't care about em an they dont care about the platies. I know they'll get a lil bigger but I'm considering getting 6 more. Cause they don't school as much as I thought they would. Even full grown they will not be very big so I think I could easily have a dozen in the tank. I'd also like to try again with an apple snail. My platies ate the last one sweatdrop They don't eat small fish no, but they devour my plants and apparently my snails! Then lastly I'll find a nice betta. I was thinking a delta this time around. Like a blueish white. To match the blue of my lamp eyes. I saw some at the petstore. Annoyingly they have more and fancier looking fish that the aquarium store. But the fish I wanted didn't look in the greatest shape.