Not even sure if I ever posted a pic of when I first started this aquarium. But took a lot of trial and error to get here. What you're looking at is a low maintenance setup, for the most part at least. I don't do water changes at all, there's no filter other than the plants, and I haven't ever cleaned the gravel out. All I do is keep the plants in good order, clean the front glass, pull hair algae, and feed the fish. My filter doesnt actually have a filter in it. I just use it to circulate water.

The results of this are pretty interesting. The water actually smells clean for one. I'm used to fish tank water having a slight bad odor.

~Its best to start with a good plant base, either soil or sand. Sounds strange to put dirt in a fish tank, but this practice has a long history I found out. In fact "dirted" tanks go back to the beginning of fish keeping. I started out with gravel, and many of my plants died just for that reason. Over time fish waste and plant detritus built up enough that its now more or less soil.

~Snails are good, like really good. They eat pretty much anything you don't want building up in the tank. Right now there are about 3 different species of snails in the tank. Two of the 3 appeared on their own, probably from aquarium plants I bought. Trumpet, Ramshorn, and some very tiny species I forget the name of. The Trumpet snails are especially nice because they dig into the gravel to eat and clean between the stones.

~Plant food is your friend, at least in the beginning. Had way more success with plants when I started adding plant food to the tank.

~Algae isn't always a bad thing. Both snails and algae get a bad rap. But neither is necessarily bad. Algae can be if you get so much it fills up your tank. But some algae is fine. Snails and many fish eat it, and it performs the same duties as aquarium plants(producing oxygen and cleaning the water)

~Goldfish actually make pretty bad aquarium fish. Downsides to Goldfish are: They need a big tank(seriously, if their tank is too small they get stressed and die quickly), they poop a lot, and they dig up and eat your aquarium plants. The little bowls you always see them in on tv are actually the worst thing you can put them in. They were the first fish I bought though. You may notice the fish in the pic are not Goldfish. Ended up giving them away(which is a pain in the ass now, thanks to animal rights activists getting every community forum to ban live animal sales).

Anyway that's the update. Its going well so far. Have it stocked with Guppies and Neon Tetras. Both cheap super easy to take care of fish species. Also very pretty to look at. Only issue I'm really having is that I keep getting too much hair algae that I have to pull by hand. Snails don't eat that one for some reason. Might be a lighting issue. Too much light can cause algae issues. When the plants get big enough I'm hoping they absorb the excess nutrients and that should help.