how the 45 is doing

My angelfish M Beautiful looks great- if you ignore the continued redness where her pectorals join the body, and she seems to always have a red area under the skin between nose and eye, too. I still don't know if this is old injuries from hitting the tank walls, or infection. I'm considering dosing the tank with meds that treat for septicemia... I noticed lately her breeding tube is showing and her stripe contrast vivid, but I don't see her cleaning any leaves or chasing the tetras.

They're doing well, too. This is the largest one.

The smaller guys it's hard to get any pictures of. They're starting to catch up in size. All have good color, hearty appetites, and are starting to beg from me at the front glass alongside M Beautiful. I think I beat the ich. Haven't seen any signs of it in over a week. I've quit doing the extra water changes, and started gradually dropping the temperature back down to normal. It's at 80 now.

My plants seem glad of the reduced water changes- more nutrients stay in the water column longer- and probably of the increased fish population, too. I've also added new leaf litter. Here's buce 'isabella':

Buces 'brownie ghost'.

Buce 'green wavy' and the round-leaved one I forgot its name. Closeup photo made me realize it's got some black algae on a few leaf margins, I'm going to lift out and trim that off.

Anubias afzelli. In background there's java ferns on top of a planter. I had lifted some of the smaller driftwood anchor pieces up onto planters when I was doing the frequent water changes, to make it easier to vacuum the bottom. (All the vals that in that planter have died).

The other anubias all look pretty healthy. New leaves:

Here's the crypt undulata (out of focus).

I added some blue ramshorn snails got from fish club.

Full tank shot. Yes, the hornwort came loose from its anchors and I didn't re-tie down. It seems to really prefer floating. But now the hydrocotyle is dying off, urgh. It seems that I can only keep one floater going at a time- if I've got two, one always does poorly.

My light timer got screwed up. Had a power outage recently, and when it came back on, the dimming part of the internal timer wasn't working properly. By the time I got it reset, the tank had gotten several days with eight hours full light each. I was going to cut it back, but the plants look better than ever. I reset it to dim after seven and a half, keeping an eye out for signs of algae.