the teardown

It took all day yesterday. I only got two photos of the actual tank as it was coming apart- first five gallons of tank water went into clean buckets, with all the floaters. Took off the background, fish got nervous

Removed equipment and hardscape items, fish got frightened. Took a long time to catch them all. I don't know why I forgot to set a trap for the kuhlis. I caught one easy, the rest with some trouble. The last one was in the tank while I uprooted all the plants- carefully, but still a huge mess of mulm and I worry he suffered from the ammonia. I couldn't find him until all the plants were out of the tank, and I had to corner him by placing a pane of plexi exactly the width of net from the tank wall, and slowly scooting it towards him, when the water was down to inches. Poor fish. Very pale.

Shrimp were easy to catch, in comparison. All livestock safe in clean buckets now, with airlines, media from the canister (lightly rinsed), some plants and leaf litter. I've been testing the water twice a day- zero ammonia or nitrites so far, low nitrate. I can tell the fishes are pale, and the nerite snails are sitting just above the water line, so they're not happy. But I hope everyone lives thru it.

Plants went into bins and buckets. I was surprised the bolbitis thicket from the right side of tank all came up in two clumps, that clung quite firmly to the stones I had windelov fern rooted on. On top of them here all the crypts and other plants...

The vallisneria from Perry's old 20H. Because that is going into the new tank too, of course.

Funny, this one made some tiny narrow leaves. Wonder why.

more plants: ludwigia repens var arcuata, hornwort, crypt undulata

I don't usually hold plants in the orange 5gal buckets (those are for tank wastewater only in my house) but I ran out of containers, and this was the cleanest looking one. More crypts, for the 20H where the serpae tetras will now live.

The canister filter was surprisingly dirty. And I hadn't gone that long since rinsing it out. And the bottom of the tank- once I scooped and siphoned out most of the substrate- was a murky mess of brown sludge. I guess it was high time to redo this tank anyway, if the safe-t-sorb was finally breaking down.

Except I perhaps made a big mistake. I thought ugh- I don't want all that mess in my new tank- and I took it outside to rinse out with the hose. Then I thought: wait, I don't want chlorine to kill all the good bacteria colony in the substrate matter! So I did 2gal bucketsworth of dechlorinated water, and rinsed about ten times until it came off less brown. And then I scaped the new tank with it. I thought: surely the fine stuff will get used by the plants. But maybe it is bad for my new tank? and I ought to have replaced with a new batch of safe-t-sorb. Ahhhh- well, it's in there now. And it looks great. I just have this huge doubt now, if I did the wrong thing- and to fix it would be tearing down the new setup just when I'd got it pretty.