aquatic plant update: tenner

Here's how my ten gallon is doing. Now home to four corydora catfish and one otocinclus. Temporary digs, for the cories, while I figure out what to do with them...

My favorite plant in this tank still is the buces. Here under a wall of windelov fern. Some of the crypt parva to the left.

I have moved the buce 'selena' into a row on the side of the tank- because I was thinking of filling the open area with more crypt parva, I just haven't got any yet. Newly-added oak leaf in center there.

Side view. Lower leaves of the anubias with thinner leaves- I've always thought it was 'lanceolata' but not sure- are getting spotty with algae but the newer leaves look nice so I think it is adjusting.

I also really like the looks of my java fern skull right now. The mouth is a cave (where my cories shelter) and the one frond coming out like a tongue has grown to touch the tank wall. I think it's the longest java leaf in the there!

The narrow buces are growing up and up. Here's a patch of them on a flat stone I moved it from the front to back a while ago.

And rotalas- both indica and rotundifolia- are really filling in!

Last of all- here's my water wisteria, which I really thought was going to disappear on me.

I noticed that a while back, when I was gone for a weekend so simply skipped tank maintenance- it went two weeks between water changes and fert dosing- that most of the plants looked better. I thought I could do the same as I'm trying with my main tank- do smaller water changes and use less ferts... but it didn't work in here. The root tabs I added, the substrate isn't deep enough in here and I think they leached out again. Next morning I found the water all cloudy, some of the cories looking distressed, and tiny white particles (of uneven size) scattered all over. Tried to siphon out with the regular hose but it was tearing semicircles out of leaves. Held further away, it wouldn't pick up the particles. I switched to using that tiny siphon I made with a syringe and airline- that worked but took a long time. Ended up doing nearly a fifty percent wc to clean it out. Fishes looked much perkier the next morning, and it's clear again now.

So I'm going back to using EI dosing here, sticking with what works.