underwater garden

Well, if my fishes are having troubles, the plants are all in fine form. At least, most of them. The Anubias have a film of algae which I can rub off easy enough; they are sprouting new leaves at a steady rate and the largest, newest addition is clinging to its driftwood mooring already.

The Java Ferns are all doing fantastic. Two young plants already have several leaves and sending threads of roots down, so I removed those from parent leaf and set in their own places, with pebble to hold it down (much easier than tying w/thread). Long roots from the main plants are going down across the wood and into the gravel bed.

I'm used to seeing plantlets form underside of old leaves, but this younger leaf has tons of green nubbins- are those also baby plants? waiting to see what develops.

The Amazon Sword are holding steady, although the outer leaves start to look shabby then I snip them off.

Vallisneria doing the worst- older leaves look brown but maybe that's algae. Younger stuff coming up bright green so I leave it alone, thinking eventually it will establish and spread. Might need higher light levels than the rest of the stuff in here.

I have divided and spread out more cutting of Rotala. Most of my plants seem to have broad leaves, I need more small foliage for variety. This is the only one that's doing that for me.

Watersprite is still the centerpiece. Every week I cut out five or six older stems- when the lower part of a stem starts to turn brown I cut it down at the substrate level and find that most of the upper foliage on that stem also degrading. Sends up new shoots all the time, so this doesn't seem to matter. Sometimes I've cut back tall stems halfway, leaving some foliage on the top, but it never branches out or grows new leaves on that stem. Just more fiddleheads from below.

Sometimes I like the view looking down into the tank.

I want to order some new plants online- one would go in this gap circled by the Java Fern.