Easy jungle, 20 long
Low light, no CO₂. Driftwood with ferns and anubias, crypts and easy stem plants, a school of chili rasboras.
Planted aquarium planner
Plan your tank before you buy a single plant or fish.
Lay out stone, wood and plants in a tank drawn to scale. TankHaven checks that your fish, shrimp and plants can live together, then works out what to buy and what order to do it in. Freshwater planted tanks and saltwater reefs.
Start from a layout
Every template is fully editable.Freshwater planted
Shrimp colony, 10 gallon
Moss-covered wood and stone with cherry shrimp and a snail cleanup crew. Very forgiving.
Iwagumi, 40 breeder
High-tech stone layout with a hairgrass carpet and a single school of fish.
Betta nano, 5 gallon
One betta in a heated, filtered 5 gallon with slow-growing plants that never need CO₂. Small, quiet and very easy.
Blackwater Amazon, 29 gallon
Tangled wood, broad swords and floating cover over a school of cardinal tetras and a group of corydoras. Tea-stained and calm.
Dutch stem garden, 29 gallon
Terraced rows of red and green stem plants in the Dutch style, with harlequin rasboras and a clean-up crew. High-tech, with CO₂.
Rainbowfish community, 75 gallon
A long tank with room to swim: boesemani rainbowfish and congo tetras over swords, crypts and tall background stems.
Big planted show tank, 125 gallon
Six feet of river-bank planting: onion plants and temple plant at the back, swords in the middle, and schools of fish to fill it.
Saltwater and reef
Clownfish nano reef, 20 gallon
A pair of clownfish over easy soft corals and zoanthids, with a watchman goby and a cleaner shrimp. The classic first reef.
Soft coral reef, 40 breeder
Leathers, mushrooms and zoanthids on open rockwork: forgiving corals with a peaceful community of small reef fish.
Fish only with live rock, 55 gallon
No corals, so no reef lighting or dosing. Characterful fish that would eat a clean-up crew, so the rock does the cleaning.
LPS and zoanthid reef, 90 gallon
Large-polyp corals and zoanthids on open rockwork, with a tomini tang, clownfish and a peaceful community. Mixed-reef lighting.
Big fish only, 180 gallon
Six feet of rock caves for a snowflake eel, a harlequin tuskfish and a purple tang. Bold fish that would eat a reef.
Know before you buy
All 216 species →
Guides
All guides →
Getting started
How to cycle a new aquarium
What the nitrogen cycle is, how to start one before you buy fish, and what your test kit should show each week.
6 min read
Plants
The best plants for a low-tech tank
Plants that grow in a plain tank with a basic light, no CO₂ and no fertiliser routine — and the ones that will only disappoint you.
5 min read
Fish & shrimp
Will my fish eat my shrimp?
Which fish are safe with cherry shrimp, which will eat the babies, and how to keep a colony going in a community tank.
4 min readDrawn to scale
Type in your tank's size and substrate slope. Plants are drawn at their real heights, so you can see what will reach the surface.
Will they get along?
Shared temperature and pH, minimum tank size, school sizes, whether your shrimp will get eaten, and how full the tank is.
Gear for your budget
Low-tech, mid or high-tech shopping lists, priced for the size of tank you picked.
Setup, step by step
The order to do things in, and a water test log that charts your tank through its cycle.