new plants in tenner

In the betta tank I put some of the ludwigia and bacopas in the background, removing a few vals that have come loose. They looked disheveled at planting time, but already today are standing up straighter and have very nice color. Here Ludwigia is behind the bacopa (ambient lighting)

I keep admiring the little windelov ferns, and you can see the ludwigia in the background raising up its leaves

I planted rotala rotundifolia, also called dwarf rotala. This one came in a packet, too.

I can see how it got its name. It's very small, the foliage is incredibly fine, and it was really hard to handle! 

My aquascaping tweezers are far to blunt for this work, and I ran out of time. So instead of planting stems individually or in small groups, I ended up planting clusters and it's all tangly and lots of stems bending. Looked a mess. But today I already saw some of the leaves were looking better

and I took the trouble to trim all the raggedy tall ones, replanting individual stems with regular tweezers this time. I've got rotundifolia on the left, mixing into the indica a bit on the right. Can see easily they are the same class of plant- the stem structure and leaf arrangement are the same, but indica has narrower oblong leaves and rotundifolia rounder leaves. Or at least, it does now. Might well change its appearance in response to the different conditions in my tank...

I failed to get a whole tank shot, because was working at replanting the tiny stems just before tank light went off for the night. Not very striking yet because all the plants are short and now there's a big blank space in the back, where the fake plastic one used to stand. Creeping jenny in here also, but can't really see it yet. I also switched positions of the heater and sponge filter. I like the heater position better- it's more hidden- but moving the sponge filter didn't have the effect I wanted. I thought its current would push the duckweed over to shade my anubias barteri, but its not really.

On another note, I finally saw a betta I really liked, at the pet store. I look every time I'm there, just to see them all. They occasionally have plakats, or dragonscales, or king bettas, but never one in colors that appeal to me. I used to think Oliver's twin tail looked so odd, when I first saw him, but now I find it attractive. So when I saw two weeks ago, a young male palakat betta with blue-green coloring like Pinkie, but double-lobed tail like Oliver, I immediately wanted to bring him home. And he's still there. I saw him yesterday and felt sad because he was lying on the bottom of his cup looking unhappy, not alert like last time. I hope someone takes him home, Oliver is still going strong so I don't think I'll be getting a new betta anytime soon...

It's the first time I've wanted to rescue a betta. I even came home and considered dividing my tenner in half, but all the examples I've seen online, don't really care for the looks of it. I could put the little betta in my eight-gallon QT, but then if I needed to isolate a fish I wouldn't have more options without buying more equipment (heater, filter, etc). So, no....