the tanks

Both aquariums seem to be doing well now, in terms of light/fert balance for the plants. I've got the best growth in my thirty-eight ever, since it was first set up.

Reducing photoperiod just one more hour seems to have put it in the right condition. Except for the downoi plant- one has decayed away to nothing, the other is looking peaky. I think the lower light is not enough for this plant, oh well. There is still a bit of hair algae I am plucking out when I can, and some tufts of BBA showed up on the very tips of several crypt wendtii leaves- but it has not reappeared on the sponge filter or the driftwood. I will either prune out those leaves or snip their tips off... Most of the plants look great- aponos especially, and rotalas in here are keeping their green stems which cheers me (they used to turn brown and scraggly a lot). I've had to thin out some hornwort. Trim and replant a few elodea stems each week now, as they hit the ceiling. The corner is full enough that from this point on I will probably just trim the longest stems to the ground and let them grow back, not bothering to replant. It's filled the area I want.

I took out some subwassertang, didn't really like the way it looked on the smaller wood pieces. The patch of it fastened to upended pot is just starting to peek up through the mesh. I do want to move the location of that item, but caused enough substrate disturbance in the tank already this week so will shift that one later.

My tenner looks so different with the snip of just one stem. Cut the tallest ludwigia stem to match height of the others, and now suddenly that bunch has a nice shape. I can't keep wisteria from spreading out of its corner and blocking light/view of the rotala indica, so I moved it behind the driftwood log. The potted wendtii switched places with it, but that's not a permanent thing. I don't think I want to actually plant that crypt in here, it would get too large for this tank. Thinking what to put in that corner instead... I've taken out all the subwasser that was on wood pieces, it didn't look good. Moved the clump on a stone to central spot, and repositioned the individual rotala rotundifolia stems into that right front corner.

For the first time, duckweed is something of a pain. It got thick enough that was piling up on itself, and I think some of it was starting to die from that- I found tons of fine, thin white hairlike bits floating all around the tank. Looks like this is detached duckweed roots? (I guessed before that it was decaying tissue from where I trimmed an anubias petiole, but now I think I was wrong about that). As my usual routine, I scoop out most of the duckweed with the first two gallons of a water change, to get it out of the way. This time instead of replacing most of it, I just put a few handfuls back in. Nice and scattered once more.

I want to put a different floater in here- I've read that giant duckweed is more easily managed, and I'd like the appearance of it on the surface to be a bit more pronounced- visually- but not as much dangling as say, water lettuce seems to do. But I'm confused as to the difference between giant duckweed and salvinia minima- which has little toothed hairs on the leaves- some people seem to use their names interchangeably or call what I think is salvinia a duckweed? Need to be sure I get the plant I'm really thinking of...