thirty-eight changes

To make room for some new plants that I'd ordered, I removed quite a few from my main tank. Several weeks ago I took out all the anchored hornwort stems and thinned out the amount pegged as floaters.

I took out two of my full-grown crypt wendtii. Moved the main group of them back to be just in front of the prefilter- possible because I pulled out the majority of rotala indica in this tank, too. I'm tired of constantly cleaning thread algae out of it.

I left exactly what you see here- seven individual stems- and relocated them to the edge of the hygro thicket. My hygro has really thin leaves and sparse appearance if you look at how others grow it- but amusingly that makes it look as if it's related to the rotala. I thought if I put the rotala stems to one side of the hygro, it would look like the same plant just new baby growth. And I think it does. I plan to cut each stem back as it gets taller to keep that illusion- maintaining the rotala stems always just a bit shorter than the hygros.

Shifting my crypts kind of exposed some of the anubias nana 'petite'- I'm still not sure how they will do in here long-term, but they are definitely trying- sending out roots into the substrate (so hopefully soon I can cut off those glaring neon rubber bands that were anchoring them down on pebbles).

Another big change is that I uprooted all the watersprite. Not sure what to do with it. I don't want to get rid of it, but I kind of like how the tank looks with it out of main sight. It's floating for now...

I sent some of these plants to other planted tank members. I like packing up plants even more than I like packing up books to swap. I put my plants in repurposed plastic packaging lined with damp paper towels, tape the edges shut and insulate them in newspaper. So far they have all arrived to their destinations safely- at least, those that I have heard back from. (I didn't send the rotala indica to anyone- that got composted).