changing scenery

for Oliver. I probably did more to his tank today than I ought to have. First pulled off a dead java fern leaf and cut out some of the long java fern root hairs that were getting in the way. They were pointing up and tangling in the foliage, having been snagged with the siphon a few times.

Plucked out a few yellowing spirodela polyrhiza. I think I took too much of this out of the tank last week- four handfuls. It didn't multiply enough to entirely cover the surface again yet, and for some reason stays clear of the area just above the big anubias. One anubias leaf had a lot of brown algae accumulating. Easy enough to wipe off, but I want to prevent that.

I cut the big anubias rhizome into three pieces. Put the largest two on suction cups on the back wall. Looks very different this way.

The smaller part with just two leaves I put low on the wall in corner, as a backdrop to rotala stems. I'm sure it will look different again in a week or two after the leaves reorientate themselves to the light. (Even shorter segment, which had no leaves, I fastened back onto part of the driftwood, in the rear. Just to see if it grows again. )

Now that the barteri is moved, the smallest anubias in here, positioned in front on the wood, is becoming a focal point.

The new leaf on the one I cut in half is getting bigger- if you look close, there are three now and more arising.

Trimmed quite a bit of fissidens- very tedious work. To avoid loosing the bits of moss all over the tank, I held each individual stem with tweezers while snipping with scissors in the other hand. Tied all these down to another side of the driftwood.

Nudged it up a few times by accident and some large bubbles came up, with a very foul smell. I've noticed in the past few weeks that lots of black stuff is decaying off the driftwood. I focus on using the siphon around the base of it because a ton of black mulm collects there each week, and it smells sulfurous. I hope it won't harm my fish. He seems okay (and the white mark on his head is gone). Don't know why another layer of the wood is breaking down now, after more than a year in the tank.

I also moved a few of the buce isabella- they were on top of that little peak of the mopani wood on the right, looking awkward. When I took its rubber band off (hadn't rooted), noticed it was bent in an odd way so I cut it in half.

The water wisteria doesn't seem happy that I moved it. Taking a long time to recover. One stem came loose and I replanted it.