thirty-eight plants

I think they are slowly recovering, from when I changed the light back. It's been up 1/2" above the rim for a week now. I do think the crypts are looking greener.

But most plants still have brown algae on the lower leaves. Looks like new growth is keeping free of that; some of them (aponogeton) I have been rubbing off the algae, others that are too fine or small I left alone. Or, in the case of ludwigia, I cut and replanted the tops, discarding all the bottom half of stems that were dying from lack of light/algae coating. Only did this to the oldest ludwigias on one side of the tank so far (short row in the front here).

The other side they still have their dark skirts.

There are no more carpeting type plants in here. All melted away. One bit of staurgyne repens left that I pegged down, but I don't really expect it to stay on. The baby downoi plants all melted to nothing- I still have the older two plants. Their outer leaves are melting, new growth in centers and stems stretching up to reach the light. Might end up looking funny.

I was worried last week about buce 'dark godzilla', it had a fine coating of brown algae that I can't quite seem to rub off. New leaf growth looks better and at least the algae on it hasn't gotten worse this week.

Dismayed that the cotton thread I used is already disintegrating! I had to lift the driftwood log out of the tank again and refasten most of the buces with rubber bands. All had come loose except for 'isabelle'.

Some of the 'blue bell' leaves have holes in them. In my other tank the buce leaves with holes kept melting away until only skeleton edge of leaf margin and rib was left, then it rotted completely. So far not too many have done that.

I removed the mondo grass. A light nudge uprooted it and I saw there was no new root growth at all, so even though what's still there looks healthy, I don't want to wait for it to go into decay. Put root tabs in the tank today. Found it's much easier to get them deep in the substrate with tweezers, and hopefully that releases less into the water column too, because I get them in quicker and farther.