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I had this posted in the Deals forum, but I thought it maybe more appropriate here.

This is Fred, he's estimated to be about 24 years old.
I am his 3rd or 4th owner. For most of his life he was living in a cramped 20 gallon tank.

This year I decided to upgrade to a 50 gallon tank


It was looking a bit bare, so I added some silk plants from a craft store zip tied to large river rocks.


For some reason, Fred stopped eating every fish I put in his tank. Now he also has fish tankmates and soon some real plants.

Real plants are the best. Start with Anacharis.

Java Fern also do great.

I bought a bunch on ebay. I tried to plant them in the tank but the turtle just bites into pieces, so I just left a bunch floating like a mini-sargasso sea. They are getting everywhere but the fish seems to enjoy it. I just have to clean my filter intake every day.

I have 2 large moss balls, eel grass, java fern, and java moss coming in today. The marimo balls are the only real plant I know for sure he won't touch. Wish me luck.

I float my anacharis float as well.

My turts rip apart the Moss Balls. They just clog the intake for me.

I put in an order with Bob's Tropical plants for a medium mat of Java Fern, some java moss, Vallisneria Spiralis aka Eel grass, and an XL Marimo balls.

This is the first time I've dealt Bob's and so far my feelings are bit mixed. All the plants were mixed together in one zip lock bag, annoying but not a deal killer. The medium java fern mat was a good size but about 1/3 of the leaves where yellow or spotty, the eel grass was smaller than I expected but they were only $1, the marimo balls were excellent, green and large, overall I'm happy with what I got at the price.

I put in about 1/2 the Java Fern mat, java moss, the eel grass and 1 Marimo ball last night. They were looking good this morning before I left. The softball sized marimo was untouched as expected, the java fern was untouched and only a few nibbles taken out of the eel grass.

^I've yet to buy from him. He's only about 30 minutes away so I could do pickup instead of shipping, but all of my LFS usually have the same stock.

I forgot to turn on my autofeeder for 2 days and Fred decided to eat 4 of my Tiger barbs and take a chunk out of one of the minnows. Poor guy is missing the bottom part of his tail, he's in a recovery bowl with lots of anacharis.

I've replaced the eaten Tigers and got 4 giant Danios to try out.

The java fern looks a little worse for wear but is hanging on. The java moss I had tried to tie to Fred's fake resin log he unraveled the fishing line I used and the java fern got eaten up by the filter. I'm going to try to super glue it on the log next. XL Moss balls are doing great, the turtle makes sure they are getting light be kicking them around when he moves

The eel grass was uprooted and shredded which I guess is okay since the were the cheapest plants.

looks great!
Mine love their plastic plant vine thing I have in there. I've never tried real plants.