plants for security

I added some plants to my 20H, for the serpae tetras. They've been looking a bit stressed- many of them pale, and they dash in a panic to the back of the tank when anyone walks by. Earlier in the week I planted some of the hornwort stems that were floating. They're short and pale with very fine needles- I didn't think it would give the fish much cover at all- but I immediately saw their behavior improve, they seemed a bit more confident- not fleeing quite as drastically. So then I trimmed all the rotala rotundifolia from my tenner (it's not doing so great in there) and planted it in here among the hornworts (which I know won't root- it's temporary).

The crypts in here are regrowing nicely- even though I haven't dosed ferts at all (holding back on that since I haven't added a light over this tank)- but they all lean towards the window.

The crypt balansae I planted in a corner is growing back, too. (It's the one plant in this tank I'll miss if I tear it down eventually).

Yesterday I picked up a few more plants at the pet store. Wisteria in the other corner now nicely hides the filter. Can see it had already started converting to submersed growth- the leaves on top have simple margins, like those on the wisteria in my betta tank.

Shrimps are already crawling all over it.

This is a plant I haven't tried before- ludwigia palustris. The label says temp range down to 60° so I planted a few stems in my paradise fish tank to try out.

In the back a few stems of hygro. I don't know what variety- the label unhelpfully just said 'hygrophilia species'. I'm curious if this is exactly the same plant I was confused on for so long and eventually ended up calling ludwigia repens var arcuata- so when a few pieces of bare stem broke off these, I shoved them under the substrate in Lady's side of the 33, by the 'ludwigia' thicket, to see if they grow out the same or not.

The fishes definitely feel more at ease now there's a good amount of plants. They still move away if I walk by the tank- but no longer panicky like they're going to dash themselves against the tank walls. They hang out in the open area more often, and I've even seen some sparring behavior among them- not mean nipping but showing off to each other.

They still have lovely, rich copper and liver colors- especially since I began feeding them the frozen foods. I feel bad that so many have bitten dorsal fins. Especially the ones I named Dot, Smudge and Broad. They seem to get the brunt of it at feeding time. Heirarchy has been rearranged- Diamond is no longer top fish. Ziggy and Truck seem to be head of the pecking order, as far as I can tell.

Aqadvisor tells me I'm totally fine with fish numbers in here, but their constant squabbling makes me think they're too crowded. I hope as the plants get thicker they'll feel more at ease. It feels kind of like stepping backwards- using hornwort as planted stems and having bright serpae colors in here gives me a constant reminder of when this tank was first set up for Fabio and the initial trio of serpae tetras I had . . . .

more plants!

Day before yesterday an acquaintance from the fish club brought me some plants from another guy who was emptying his tanks for a move. From what he'd listed as available, I'd picked plants that might do well in my unheated window tank: vallisneria and some anacharis. It turned out to be a lot more plants than I'd expected.

They'd been in Jay's tank temporarily for about a week in holding- so some were in poor shape. I spent two or three hours just going through them one by one, cutting the runners loose (easier to handle), stripping off damaged and dead foliage, removing snail egg clusters (pond or bladder snails). Ended up with enough vallisneria to easily plant the back wall of Perry's tank:

Discards (a dinner plate full):

So along with the vals-

I also found in the bucket two little bits of elodea and what looks like windelov fern babies

a piece of what I think is asiatic water fern (bolbitis?) with two baby plants on it

some pieces of stem plant- bacopa, maybe

bits of watersprite

and something with finer leaves and denser growth than vallisneria- sagittaria is my guess

Also some tiny threads of what might be riccia, but could also be algae so I discarded that. And a tangle of moss- more on that later. All these plants are going into my window tank because even with a dip and rinse, I don't know what they might have been exposed to and better to just risk one fish... I tied the windelov ferns to a rock, planted the best stem piece (if it's bacopa won't live thru the cold temps in here) and let the elodea and watersprite float. Spent hours planting the vallisneria. Now my window tank looks like what I'd been imagining if the vals ever grew in.... See next post.

on going lean

Here's my thirty-eight after two weeks of no attention (minimal feeding is all). Seems like the plants hardly noticed. A few crypts and aponogetons bleached out a leaf or two is all. Hornwort grew like crazy, I had to trim every single stem of that, by more than half. Put a lot into the window tank as floaters. One plant that did deteriorate a lot was the watersprite. It looks terrible. Worse than when I first started and didn't know about dosing ferts. I guess when there was competition at the surface with few nutrients, hornwort won out. Back on schedule today. A benefit of feeding less, is the shrimps appear to work harder! Usually my flame moss and subwassertang have had tiny tufts of algae hairs (very pale, almost clear) but now that is almost all gone. I am really liking these two amano shrimp. They are very bold. They come right to the front of the tank and grab for food amongst the kuhli loaches. I often see them in the daytime scaling plants right out in the middle of things, and one of them likes to get up to the surface and scavenge among the hornwort needles. It's funny to see him scurrying around upside-down there. The serpae tetras are getting more responsive to my presence- they come out pretty quickly to see if there's food now. But still, only the younger (smaller) ones will eat frozen bugs - aphids mostly- from my garden. The bigger fish spit it out. Kuhlis, shrimps, and in the other tank, the swordtail and catfishes, aren't as picky. Samblu won't touch them. He'll eat frozen moths and caterpillars, but doesn't seem to like aphids unless they're fresh. Hm.

tank notes with no pictures

Did tanks maintenance today because treating the 38 gal w/levamisole which means today it got a 50% water change and tomorrow a 75%. That feels like a lot of work. Also wrapped in black plastic for darkness. And noted on the calendar to repeat in three weeks. Today I moved one of those unidentified crypts in the front corner- to the back of the grouping- so that bolbitis fern that is slowly growing out more visible. I want to see it. Also trimmed off a few of the longer leaves, just to clear the view. I was a bit surprised to find there was very little algae, very few dying-back leaves to trim off, hornwort mostly looked healthy with longer, strong needles and even watersprite is improved. Usually I take a few of the lower leaves off each watersprite bunch, that is browning. This week- none.

I'm wondering if the difference is the lighter fish load (since cherry barbs all moved out). Because I mistakenly thought I had the bigger filter, I had plugged into aqadvisor and it was telling me more fish okay. I did think the tank looked too busy, a bit crowded; I hadn't pushed it to the limits of the stocking calculator's suggestion, but it was close. Now that I realize I'm a size smaller w/my canister know that I can only put four more serpae tetras in there, to hit the limit. Which is fine with me!

It also might be a factor of feeding more live and fresh foods recently. I do see a slight film on the water surface when looking up from below- like fine dust- it doesn't bother me too much- I think it's from fine debris even though I rinse the bugs and whatnot, or from hairs off their bodies? (for example, the tiny moths are furry) Not sure. I thought the film meant the live food made the water a bit dirtier, but it's not actually disintegrating into dissolved mess like some of the flakes and pellets do...

Irritating was to find a freshwater limpet on the glass. I noticed earlier in the week there were two small, very fine scratches- on the inside- that hadn't been there before. The week before I had cleaned the glass inside w/algae scrubber. I bet I got a tiny limpet caught in the scrubber- and scratched the glass with it. Must have transferred some over here accidentally from the betta tank. Gah.~
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In the window tank, it does seem I was right guessing why the swordtails had been laying low again. Now that the filter has more sponge media stuffed into it and the flow rate is slowed down, they are moving about as normal again. Still not as quick chasing food as the cherry barbs, but they are in the midst and do get some.

The tank has been getting some diatoms, it looks like- pale brown haze on the glass, mostly on the back wall against the window, and some on front right corner. It's easy to wipe it off just with my finger- in fact, easier than using algae scrubber because I can rub it off the silicone in the corner as well without damaging anything.

I took the aponogeton capuronii trimmings of long leaves out of that tank and put it in the male cherry barbs' tenner. Instead of hornwort, which was shedding needles all over and melting into a scattered mess. I had been cleaning up most of it each week and tossing in new trimmings, but getting tired of that. To keep a bit of floating cover in there, I tried putting these long capuronii leaves draped across the surface, and the handful of s polyrhiza culls from the betta tank. I know those will probably die just as quickly- there's simply not enough ambient light in this location- but maybe not as much of a pain to clean up each week.

All the cherry barbs' tails are over halfway grown back, now. Some of the females they almost look complete in form, just the new fin tissue is clear. I've seen a few of them grow back from nips and tears in the past, and eventually the new fin part colored up again, so curious to see if these all do as well.
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My betta tank continues to slowly improve. I moved some rotala stems from the front corner (now crypt is mostly focal point of that spot) to space across the back. Bacopa still kind of faltering, more dying stems than thriving. I'm considering taking that plant out of here entirely. Have started slowly pulling out the dying marislea hirsuta. Only one clump today, because things were already a bit disturbed. (Not as if the fish cared. Samblu was so close to my hand while working, I didn't see him and accidentally he got sucked into the cup I was using to scoop out floaters- by the pressure of backwash. I noticed when he thrashed in the still-partly-submerged cup) Because of moving the rotalas, there was more mulm kicking into the water column than I could get out with my tiny siphon, and some of it settled back on the foliage afterwards, but I know what was the cause this time and still think it's doing better since I started vacuuming more thoroughly. One nice thing about how gentle the tiny vacuum is, I can put it right over a clump of fissidens and get fine debris out without dislodging the moss.

in the thirty-eight

Here's my new plants settling in. You can see watersprite is floating in the right upper corner, and it looks different too with the the bacopa trimmed back and replanted on that same side. Most of the crypts have melting leaves, but are showing new growth already too:

Aponogeton capuronii- I'm afraid this thing is going to be a beautiful monster. I read that max size was 20-40" so I was hoping I could keep it in my tank while taking off the older leaves to keep it in check- like I currently do with the apono crispus. However the size of this bulb is easily five times over the size of my apono crispus' bulbs- it's huge! I propped it up with a few stones until it starts rooting. It appears to have two crowns growing out of it, so it might be possible to split the bulb... You can see capuronii is already putting out new leaves- I like that they have a olive-green hue which might balance out the darker leaves I have in opposite corner with my crypt wendtii and the new crypt balansae.

I've got the new crypt balansae and three crypt retrospiralis planted in the corner behind the vallisneria. Trying to replace most of my vals with crypts as I am getting tired of thinning out the little runners all the time. Right now I think this corner looks rather pretty with the mixed types of long, slender leaves. It was a bit difficult to get the retrospiralis to stay down without burying their rhizomes. I finally pegged one down with a plastic strip that used to hold watersprite in place, put a small stone over another and sprinkled a handful of substrate over the third. You can see the crypt balasae better in a corner shot I took of the full tank- going to put that up in next post this one is getting long already.

These two tall plants kind of curving towards each other with the white base (like an onion) are crypt willisii var 'lucens'. Already a new leaf is emerging- see left side of the left plant- I'm waiting to see what the size is on that. If they stay shorter I might move them a little more to the foreground.

Crypt becketti 'petchii'- this one is kind of hard to show. I have two of them, one either side of the tank mid-ground. They each had a few long olive-green leaves which are quickly melting away. Here's one in front of the hygro/rotala patch.

Central of the second pic, just below the stones propping up capuronii, is a new leaf emerging on crypt petchii. Can't quite make it out in this image, but it has nice alternating color on the leaf margins- I think it will be a pretty plant, and it's one I've wanted to try in here for a while.

Crypt parva- it's hard keeping these down in the substrate. You can see all the mts moving in to eat the melting plant parts. New bright leaf tips coming up!

Here's another pic of that- I've got it alongside the driftwood log and in a few areas of the mid-foreground.

Marsilea hirsuta- this stuff is delicately pretty but such a mess right now. I hope it does okay planted rather deep, because no other way I can keep it down. Over half of it floated loose in the first week- fish might also be culprits as I saw a male barb tugging experimentally at a fading leaf. I replanted a bunch of it yesterday, but whatever is still coming loose in another week I will probably just discard, as long as the stuff that stays down is showing new growth to recover.

Micromeria- this one hasn't really shown any melt yet. I am not too expectant of it, as it all died on me before. It would be nice to have some more rounded leaf shapes in the tank, but I'm not betting on it. Speaking of round shapes, you can't really see the echinodorus in here anymore- the one I thought was a melon sword- I cut off a lot of older leaves that were looking poorly. Either it is really slow to adjust or didn't like getting moved- I have shifted it twice. Gave it an extra root tab but I'm not sure if it's happy yet. At least it is no longer coming loose from the substrate, seems to be rooting down and holding on better...

Flame moss- um, this one was an impulse buy and I am not really sure I should have got it. It looks so pretty in pictures with the gently spiraling stems of tiny plant hairs reaching up. But honestly, I have never done so well with moss. Gave up on java moss long ago, and the fissidens in my tanks is still not looking so good- it gets algae and debris stuck in it... but oh well, I am giving it a try. I fastened some onto an upturned plant basket with netting- you can see here already it is growing up through the net. Also put a few clumps tied down on stones and then sold off the remainder, as I didn't really know what to do with it all.

Bolbitis fern you can barely see in here. It is dead center of the picture. I love the color of it- kind of like subwassertang- but not sure at all how it will do. I've read various reports- for some people it does best rooted on wood, for others in the substrate. I tied some on my log, and tied a few other pieces alongside pebbles to hold them resting on the substrate until they might root out.

Here's another pic of it- again in the center of the image, so small!

Well that's it for new plant pictures, phew! More updates coming as they grow. Now that the garden is at rest outside, I'm paying more attention to the underwater garden indoors... so expect to see a lot more of that.

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).

rescape

Over the past two weeks I've done a bit of rearranging in my main tank. Last week I took out the buce log, trimmed off all the oldest, algae-infested leaves (BBA is mostly gone now, not showing up anywhere else) and cut off the near end of it so I could rotate it a bit and bring it closer to the front, out from behind the clump of crypt wendtii. While I was at it thinned out some vallisneria in the corner, and untied all the watersprite from driftwood anchors. That wasn't working. I've gone back to pegging them into the substrate until they can root themselves. But can't find my plastic strips (and I haven't been buying milk in plastic jugs lately) so I clustered all the watersprite together, broke a cheap wooden chopstick nearly in half and used that to pin them down.

This week I moved forward all the hygro and ludwigias, uprooted the crypt wendtii that's in the background and took it from the basket to plant into the substrate, and moved the last three big aponogeton crispus into the background.

It doesn't look a whole lot different. But I like it better so far. I knew that uprooting some plants would spike the nitrates (even though I kept a hose ready and siphoned out for the water change each time I pulled a plant up, to remove as much of the released mulm and debris as I could) so I dosed lighter on the ferts this week. Even so, there's lots of that fine, almost-translucent algae on the surface of many leaves now, it's like sparse, very fine fur if you look closely. Also more thread algae growing in the watersprite and rotalas, I groomed them again.

But other algae have kept at bay, and the green spot and black marks that show up on older crypt leaves when that plant is hungry are dissipating. I noticed finally that the biggest crypt was looking brown again, then kind of bronzed and purplish all over. Gave it some root tabs and now it is recovering. I don't know why I always forget to put the tabs in soon enough, for the heavy root feeders.

One plant I'm really pleased with lately is the bacopa caroliniana. It's nearly reached the ceiling and looking very pretty. Upper leaves are larger than the lower ones- I suppose because they get more light? Rotala indica I did have to trim some stems of it this week, because they were at the surface. That felt like an accomplishment.

I am not sure how to make the plants look nice together, now- the aponos really have the appearance of a column in the center of the tank that rises up and seems to spread out across the top where hornwort matches the paler green color. I'm not sure yet if I like that.

the main tank

Looking good since the one-day blackout for levamisol treatment. There was very little thread algae to pull out this week, no ratted elodea to remove, and minimal BBA.

I think the crypt wendtii is getting its nice olive-green color back, too.

Probably from the adjustment I made to the KN03 dose? I remember the moment at which I decided the tank did better without KN03 dosing, but can't recall why I started giving it a pinch every week again. It seems the sweet spot is actually in between- two weeks now it's been getting a smidgen and a half- hm.

Earlier this week I sat down one afternoon and made another subwassertang basket.

Took some time, but I did a tidier job of it- sewing on a circle of plastic netting just on the end part of the basket, it doesn't hang down over the edge. I sewed just one side of it, then threaded bits of subwassertang through the netting, then sewed down the rest of the edge, with fishing line. It was tricky work, but looks great right away, no waiting weeks for some greenery to grow up through the netting. One one piece came free after I placed the basket into the substrate.

I cut the rim off, so it will be easier to lift out again- the first one I made is pretty snug in its place, if I want to move it again it will disturb a lot of mulm. With the rim clipped off, it will lift free with less disturbance.

Right away the black kuhlis came over to inspect, when I put it in the tank.

I fed kuhlis in the trap again a few days ago- they got extra helping of spirulina wafer in the evening. Those black kuhlis are smart and eager- two of them entered the trap before I had even settled it onto the substrate! Albert approaches last, but within time to get his fair share.

I'm concerned to see that several of my black kuhlis have fine scratches on the top of the heads, or on the back. I think it's either from entering/exiting the food trap- I need to make the holes a little bigger or file down the edge, might be a sharp part there.

Either that, or they are harming themselves on fishing line, where it holds down watersprite behind the log. I may have to remove those and just plant them into the substrate again, pegged down with plastic v's. Which never held perfectly, but I'd rather have to re-peg plants occasionally than see my fishes get injured.

My bitten cherry barb on the other hand, her tail is growing back nicely.

She's on the left, here.

plants in the tank

A little less on the ferts this week- smidgen and a half of the KN03. I'm trying to find the fine line where plants still get enough to look healthy but algae gets outcompeted. These pictures are not very good because I took them at the end of the day, lights were starting to go down. Will try to get better ones soon.

Moved some of the subwasser on stones, trimmed a few. More got trimmed from the tenner. Just behind them can see a new shoot going up from an aponogeton plant.

Cleaned out the elodea thicket in the corner- about half reduced. Lots of stems were getting algae coated, I just remove them. I've noticed that when I trim a stem and it sprouts a second shoot, one of the now-double tops always gets ratted and dull-looking from algae, the other remains clean. I cut out all the poor ones leaving the nicer tops, but curious why it does that.

Hornwort long and very healthy-looking this week. Trimmed about a third of that back and saved some nice plumes to grow out floating loose, tucked between the tethered stems.

Cleaned a lot of thread algae out of the rotala by hand. It was like grooming the plants- I put my fingers around each stem near the base, gently ran hand up it slightly pinched, so the individual leaves ruffle between my fingers. I can't see the thread algae, unless the light is very bright, but I can feel the slight tug when they resist or pull on the plants. Pinch fingers snugly when passing the top of the stem, then dip and release into a small container of water- the threads fall free. I'm surprised at the end, how many threads I got out of there, more than I'd expected. I think it was the first time I actually groomed all the stems, not just where I could actually see the algae. So far they are still few in numbers, so it wasn't too painstaking to do.

Aponos I moved to the back wall are each sprouting a new leaf this week, so I guess they are settling in. I will wait to move the rest until done with some other stuff- next week I plan to lift out the buce log, trim off the older leaves that still get BBA, and thin out the vallisneria.

I have gradually realized that I don't like the look of windelov fern on driftwood bits. It looks loose and messy. I have gently detached all the ones that were on pieces of wood, and retied them onto a flat stone. Much better in appearance.

The wood bits I used to tether down some baby watersprites. The big ones behind the driftwood I had recently tethered to glass beads with loose loops of fishing line- so they are held just at the substrate but not buried. Their roots can go in to get a hold, but they won't drift loose and come up like happens so often. I've tried it again with a few more baby plants, but this time looped them onto the driftwood. My plan is that the new stems will grow up through the loops, and keep them in place. But maybe I tied it a bit too tight for that.

I've noticed that each plant only grows three main stems, before one starts to die off and another fiddlehead emerges. Not sure if this is always a pattern with this plant. Since using glass beads and doing my filter improvements, I've also noticed that the baby plants coming up piggyback on the main stems have a different form- they grow with a thick, straight upright stem uncurling right from the start. Before all the young plants formed as tiny sprigs of leaves at the junction, which gradually grow more fronds. I don't know if this is because the plant is responding to the better flow, or just because it has matured.

For the first time yesterday I was able to feed my kuhli loaches garlic-soaked bloodworms. Before, I had no way to get them this particular food before the barbs grab it all. This time I gave the barbs their share, and then shortly after lowered the food trap (empty) into the tank. The kuhlis are learning- all four black ones swarmed the entrance at once. Two of them were already in there by the time I reached in a syringe of worms to inject food through the top hole. I waited a while for Albert to go in the trap, then moved very slowly to put in a second helping of bloodworms. Unfortunately this time Albert panicked when I bumped the trap slightly, and scrambled for the exit. The black loaches startled too, but they came back right away, and by the time Albert had got up his nerve to approach again, they had eaten all the bloodworms.

Oh well, I think he is learning. The black kuhlis know this thing means food, hopefully soon Albert will too, and realize he doesn't get hurt or stuck in there. I'm using it two or three times a week now, to give the kuhlis an extra helping of algae wafers, shrimp pellets or soaked micropellets. And now bloodworms. Feel very satisfied to finally see them get that treat.