For the past couple years, I’ve envisioned a miniature Amazon River in our living room. After all, many popular aquarium fish, such as tetras and corydoras, are from that part of the world, so I figured this environment would be easy enough to create. It has not been difficult, but it has taken a lot of time. The video below shows 5 months of progress on this project.

I first got this 29 gallon (110 liter) tank in November 2023 and started filling it not long after that. Then, I waited over a month for the tank to cycle, so it could finally sustain life. If you’re thinking about getting an aquarium, I recommend taking your time throughout the process. It take a bit a patience, but it’s worth it for you (and for the health of your fish).

In this biotope loosely based on the Amazon River basin, I added aquatic plants native to the Amazon River. In the wild, plants can be rare in many tributaries of the Amazon River, but live plants are important for the stability of an aquarium (unless you want to do more maintenance). They remove excess nutrients from the water and add oxygen for the tank denizens to breathe.

So far, the plants I’ve added Amazon swords (Echinodorus amazonicus), Brazilian pennywort (Hydrocotyle leucocephala), bog moss (Mayaca fluviatilis), Dwarf Chain Sword (Helanthium tenellum), Tonina Fluviatilis, Micro Swords (Lilaeopsis brasiliensis), and Dwarf Red Parrot’s Feather (Myriophyllum brasiliensis). The animals I’ve added are neon tetras (Paracheirodon innesi), mystery snails (Pomacea bridgesii), silver hatchetfish (Gasteropelecus levis), bronze corydoras (Corydoras aeneus), Otocinclus (Otocinclus vestitus), ghost shrimp (Palaemon sp.), and a banjo catfish (Bunocephalus coracoideus).

There’s also a bunch of pest snails that got into the tank from the plants, but I have another project in the works to keep them under control. So stay tuned for our next aquarium project!