new setup

I've finally got my aquarium set up again and replanted. It's in a new location off the side of my kitchen- better for viewing the fish, closer to my water source, less foot traffic past it, and a few other reasons. This is an older aquarium and I really like the appearance of wood trim on the old wooden dresser (very sturdy, the furniture piece has a steel frame).

It's hard to get good photos because of the reflection in from windows. This will be an image-heavy post as I'm experimenting with the camera and lighting (window blinds open/shut, aquarium light on or off) to learn how to take better pictures. In general, I find the colors come out more true to life with the aquarium light off, but I get lots of glare and reflections unless it's on. It will be even harder to get nice photos of the future inhabitants, as they move!

As you can tell from these first few pictures, I've added a background (blue), a few more plants, and some driftwood pieces. The driftwood thing almost requires an entire post by itself, but I'll deal with it briefly here. I wanted driftwood to soften my water, lower the pH, and add a natural look. I'm pleased with the results so far, but it took a lot of preparation! I bought the wood from pet store, it's purported to be safe for use (no chemicals) but needed to be soaked. This helps release the tannins so it doesn't stain the water brown/yellow, also makes the wood sink. Boiling the wood releases the tannins faster. So over the past two weeks I've had large pots of water on my stove merrily simmering chunks of dead trees. I reluctantly cut the largest driftwood piece in half because it wouldn't fit in any container I had for soaking. The larger half still didn't fit in any pot, so for that piece I put it in one of my fish buckets, poured boiling hot water over, covered with a lid.

The goal is to get the water from being brown to clear, by frequently changing the water out until it's no longer stained. When I started this process, the water stained so dark you could hardly see the wood in there. It was still a bit tinted when I decided to be done with it, but if I'd gone on longer (weeks into months) could have probably got it perfectly clear.

I've had the wood in the tank for a day and half now, and it's not staining the water much so I'm satisfied.

Now the plants! My old and new plants alike seem to have survived the changes over the past week just fine, even spending four days in a bucket. They all have new roots growing, and most show signs of growing new leaves as well. Here are the Water Sprite

and Rotala, replanted. You can see this one has grown quite a bit!

I've got the Vallisneria all across the background, like before.

New plants include two Amazon Sword

and three Anubias (two varieties) which I've attached to the driftwood. One is tied down with thread, the other two simply wedged into crevices in the wood. There are little shoots of new baby leaves growing!

On the other side of the tank I have two specimens of Java Fern tied onto another driftwood piece.

If you look close, you can see new leaves unfurling like a fern fiddlehead.

Overall it looks rather spread out and sparse, but I hope again that the plants will fill in eventually. Here's a few more pictures, just because I enjoyed taking them!

Oh, and here's the Snaily. He doesn't seem perturbed at all by the move.

A note for myself on the lighting: I've cut the aquarium light hours down to 10, and shifted them later in the day. The new location gets plenty of ambient light during the day for viewing (and no direct sunlight a long as I keep the blinds partly closed around middday) so I'm going to have the lights on from 1 to 11pm and see how that works. It's a tricky balance- enough light for the plants to thrive, but no excess that algae can use. As far as I understand, when the plants grow bigger it won't be as much of a problem as they will use up nutrients and leave less for the algae. Plus I might get an algae-eating fish as well...