not up to par

I'm starting to feel a little frustrated with my betta tank. It still has this continual accumulation of mulm- looks like snail poo all over the place, coating the leaves. I have tried feeding the fish less, increasing the airflow on the filter, vacuuming over the substrate more diligently. Started pulling out the biggest trumpet snails. Maybe I should remove the last horned nerite in here, if it is creating that much waste. Even replaced the driftwood log a while back, because I thought the old one had deteriorated and was breaking down. There are still tons of limpets, too.

Yesterday I tried making a smaller gravel vac. The one I have is too large- it doesn't get into corners very well maybe that's the problem, I haven't been able to do a very thorough cleaning. I have a plastic syringe use to measure out Prime and liquid ferts- the numbers are wearing off (though I marked the measurements use the most scratch with a knife) and the rubber piece sticks so it was getting difficult to do drops evenly. I got a new syringe for that and took this one apart- put a piece of airline on and now it's a tiny gravel vac. It works- I got clouds and clouds of mulm out of the tank this time- but very very slow. I guess that's a plus right now, it allows me to adequately clean the whole tank before I'd sometimes just use the hose w/out any fittings, to get into corners, but that sucked up the water too fast and before I had done all the areas, enough water was out for the wc. So I really need something in between these two sizes!

Regarding the plants- marsilea hirsuta definitely not going to make it in here.

Java fern mass is about a third new leaves now- and they look so much nicer than the old ones. Bacopa (behind it on the right) looks crappy. Maybe it is time for a root tab dose in here. Or maybe it is time to take that plant out...

Windelov fern is also growing out lots of new leaves that look better. Anubias no longer has the paler foliage with dark veins, so that's good. Subwassertang is clinging by itself on wood now- on this corner piece it's even holding on to the top side of that little peak.

And here behind the crypt. Which is kind of funny, because in my other tanks I never got it to hold onto anything, only works on the baskets.

Best of all in this tank is still the bucephalandra- on the log the two bunches of 'isabella' are like dull flowers.

The tiny creeping ones are slowly increasing in mass.

This one on the substrate has a bright new leaf.

I took a cutting off of the 'selena' again, it had a root above some lower leaves so I was able to plant that. I like how this bunch of them is starting to look in the front of the tank. Unfortunately the different types are getting mixed up and I'm not sure if I remember which is what anymore.