planted tank

I feel like I can actually refer to mine as a planted tank now! Spent hours yesterday carefully planting stuff, lots of pics to share. Particularly because I want to be able to compare growth rates and see how things do or progress. Starting with the main tank, I added:

creeping jenny, which put me in a bit of confusion. The sender identified this as creeping jenny- I've got it in the back, see the small round vertical row of leaves like green coins? That's jenny.

But the plant on its left, with much larger round, flat leaves, is what I thought was creeping jenny what I got it unmarked from the store several weeks ago. Here's a better pic of the now-unknown plant, center (maybe it's a kind of pennywort?):

From above you can see the huge difference in leaf size, not to mention that jenny has perfectly round leaves, the other one not so (sorry it's blurry, I didn't turn off the filter for pics so water movement).

I got exactly one stem of ludwigia, so divided it in half and put a bit in each tank. It's dead center here, pretty small, just to the right of the crypt pot:

Another stem plant- bacopa monnieri. Now that I have this plant in hand I can easily see it's a bacopa, the stem structure is exactly like the bacopa caroliniana. Here is is behind the buce godzilla (who is really the focus of this picture!)

and another bit (I think? its leaves are rounder) which had a curving stem so try as I might couldn't get it to stay down without bits sticking up wrong. Hopefully it can put roots down and right itself. I will see as it grows if I've mis-identified.

Fissidens fontanus! Also called phoenix moss. Although I'm excited to have this plant, I don't know if I went about it the right way. Attached to the driftwood with tiny rubber bands. Eventually these do fray apart and break off in my tanks, hopefully the moss will attach itself by then. (I don't have any cotton thread, all mine are poly blends so I tried this).

Can see a tiny bit here the tomato nerite is crawling over.

Baby P. helferi downoi- one here to the left of the bigger plant I put in last week,

and three more bitty ones in front here. Behind them is the monte carlo. A plant I never expected to have- I thought it would need higher light and c02- but it came in the package so what the heck, I'll give it a chance. I don't expect much, though.

Planting tiny bits of horizontal 'carpet' stuff is frustrating. I am getting better at planting stems more-or-less neatly (using my new tweezers) but don't have the knack yet for putting in little horizontal runners. Sticking one end down deep and tucking the other just pops it up again.

Grasping a end and dragging it thru diagonally works a little better. I ended up shifting the pieces side to side kind of wiggling them down until it would just hold, then sprinkling a bit more loose gravel on top. Gahhh.

This makes a mess in the aquarium, of course. And as soon as I lift my fingers or tweezers away, the kuhlis and nearest trumpet snails come over to see what I've stirred up, or what little old plant parts they can munch on. I expect to find floating plant bits every morning for a while now. Here's staurogyne repens, also a real pain to plant and probably some of it will come loose again. I also put in one tiny stem of hydrocotyle tripartita - pennywort- which was too small to even get a decent pic of.

Subwassertang! Cool stuff. This one looks fantastic off the bat:

The black kuhlis were enthusiastic about its addition too!

I think I have enough new plants now! It's been six months and I feel like my aquarium is finally getting into a good state, which makes me excited to see what I can grow. I've done some research of plants that can grow w/out c02 and have compiled a list of at least twenty-three more species I like the looks of and might give a try someday. For now, wait to see how these do.