I purchased an Aqueon Evolve 4 hugely on sale a few month ago, and finally decided I had enough spare plants and time to try a basic setup. This is one of the first all-inclusive style tanks I’ve ever purchased – meaning it comes with built in components to house the filtration, heater, etc. Everything is very well packaged and instructions are fairly clear, especially if you’ve ever setup a fish tank before.

This is one of the skinniest spaces I’d ever tried to scape in, so I wanted to try out a few different orientations of the piece of driftwood I’d chosen for the scape. Ultimately, I wasn’t very happy with the wood piece itself, but decided to go forward since I had no other materials at the time. The wood is beautiful, but didn’t match the space or plants I had.

I didn’t have many plants available from my junk tank to move to the Aqueon Evolve 4. I had a few sprigs of Hygrophila corymbosa, aka temple plant, starhorn, or giant hygro, which I placed in the back right corner. Some Lilaeopsis novae-zelandiae, aka Microsword or Copragrass was tucked off to the left. A few small pieces of java fern and green comboba were also added just in case they could take off.

Overall, I plan to only use this scape as a placeholder until I get more supplies. It will be an upgrade for the sparkling gourami, who gets another gallon or so to roam around in, and it will let me see how well the light fixture works. Updates to come!