plants!

I keep taking pictures of the underwater plants, to compare their progress. Can't help myself, being so pleased with the improvement. Today during maintenance only trimmed off a few bleached out leaves of java fern and deteriorating amazon sword in the big tank, none in the tenner. I think the plants are still going through a bit of adjustment and letting their older, damaged leaves die off- the new growth continues to look good. I just ordered the other two macro nutrient dry ferts, so next week my plants will get the complete dose. I haven't taken a picture of the entire tank in a while (dismayed at how awful it was doing for so long) and it's hard to avoid a glare in the center for some reason, but here it is:

I'm so pleased that the watersprite has become a thicket dense enough that one of the striped kuhlis likes to hang out under it.

From the side you can see how quickly its grown! Touching the ceiling.

It's nice to see the plants becoming a green background to the group of cherry barbs.

The most mature apono in the corner is starting to really show its ruffled beauty

Funny that it has such a different growth habit from the others- it has narrow leaves

while the second-largest (quickly catching up) has broad, darker leaves:

and this one in the corner with narrower leaves seems to turn around itself

Also found a tiny leaf of val that got stuck in the gravel layer- but is growing tiny roots! (hard to picture)