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Consistency Deficiency

Im not sure why it is interesting to see my FTS's,
It's part of the rules. Gotta have an FTS. Otherwise none of the other photos count :p. I have to say hats off for a second stab at H. Pinnatifida. I might do the same - but not until some dim and distant point in the future when I am older, wiser, have a long flowing white beard and at least a faint idea of what I am doing.
 
Belated sunday-ish update.

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I think I have found a pretty sweet spot with the lights at 15% each. Its possible the plants could grow even faster with a bit more, but I think I would also get more algae that way so I will stay on this light level for a while and just enjoy. Faster isnt always better anyway. Plant growth is really nice, duckweed index is happy, Ludwigia Super Red didnt die when I replanted it a while ago. What more could a girl want?

I feel like I can just tinker with small adjustments now to get things running as perfectly as possible since there are no major issues.
I have no doubt I will eventually run out of things to change at this level and start to up the light just to see what will happen, but its a little while away still :twisted:

Im making a few tweaks to the ferts, for two seperate reasons.
My new weekly totals are as of today;
4 ppm NO3
0.2 ppm PO4
7 ppm K
0.5 ppm Mg

0.0375 ppm Fe DTPA
0.075 ppm Fe EDTA
0.0165 ppm Mn
0.0105 ppm Zn
0.009 ppm B
0.00135 ppm Mo
0.0015 ppm Cu

Reason one is ive had some strangeness with curling leaves of some plants and slight symptoms of ~something~ in others, see this thread for more details.
I added a touch of Magnesium to my daily macro dose, to make sure Mg continues to be available during longer periods of no water changes.
I upped my K a bit to see if the Hygrophila polysperma will have less holes in old leaves, but this symptom could also be caused by lack of CO2, so this change might not do anything.
I also increased my Iron and traces by +50%, because the Hydrocotyle tripartita and Anubias coffeefolia were showing some possible chlorosis in new leaves, and I was running on a very low dose already. I believe some of the traces could cause leaf curling when they are deficient, so a general increase may also help that if im lucky. Im not going to adjust individual trace ratios at the moment, im planning to go down that rabbithole of insanity at a later point.

The second part of the tweaks are to reduce build up of ferts for the times where the tank may go a few weeks between water changes. Since I am now changing only 25% water because of the shrimp, the build up is even more pronounced. So I am cutting NO3 and PO4 dose by approximately half. I want to note here that I have never experienced algae related to fertilizer dosing in my tank. I could dose 7 ppm nitrates or 30 ppm nitrates, the thread algae stays at same level. If I run my lights at 100% however, oh boy will I get algae, regardless of ferts. I just wanted to make that part clear, im only reducing these because I am seeing build up, not because of anything else. If you are changing 50% of your water every week without fail then build up is nothing you need to worry about. My tank is much more heavily stocked than it was in the beginning of this journal, and thus is producing more nitrate and phosphate from fish waste. This means I can get away with adding less of these two from ferts.


I also wanted to say that if you are reading this journal and there is something you dont quite understand or something I could make clearer, please feel free to post asking me to elaborate. Worst case I would refer you to an existing thread on the subject 😃 I have realised my journal is a bit of a weird mix between low tech peasantry and in-depth chemistry/fertilizer talk.

On to the plants:

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The two top pots of Hygrophila polysperma contain old shoots that were prevented from growing due to shade by dominant stems, and trimmed bottoms, hence the ratty looking leaves.
Bottom pots are replanted shoots. Im working on propagating this plant a little bit so I have more large stems and can fill out the new scape better.

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Blyxa looking pretty good minus a few issues, inert grown on the left this time and in tropica soil on the right.

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Dominant stems of Nesaea got replanted into the Bolbitis, brilliant trick I learned from Ady's journal, looks pretty cool I think.


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The Limnophila sessiliflora from the Tropica pot, and the bunch that came in looking weird has turned out to be the same plant after all.
The pot from Tropica has been the most steady growing once it got going, the other stems have taken forever to recover from some sort of grave mystery insult I accidentally inflicted upon them, and are still not growing 100%. Im also propagating this one a bit as I think it will make a nice backbone of fast growing plants together with the H. polysperma.

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The Hygrophila pinnatifida has gotten its own "floating" island made out of a bit of redmoor wood fastened to the background with a suction cup.
I took these pictures mainly so I can look back and know which leaves have grown in my tank. Id like to monitor closely how its doing and im sure there are readers here who are equally interested @Karmicnull 😉 The island is located very close to a filter outlet because this plant grows on top of waterfalls in nature and is adapted to quite a lot of flow.

Im hoping my filter shrimp will find their way up here, as I intentionally made it so that they can hide behind the piece of wood. They were so happy in the holiday colony tank, and had even stopped reacting to us approaching the tank. But now in the main tank they have sadly gone back into hiding and I am constantly trying to make them feel more comfortable. They greatly prefer spots with lots of flow obviously, but the gabonensis species also seems to prefer the filtering spot to be dimly lit or under something, so that they feel protected. Lastly the spot should ideally be reachable by climbing, as they dont normally swim around much looking for good areas. I will try to make some sort of bridge for them to get up there.


Bonus Sturisoma
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Here is the legally required FTS 😁

I wrote last time that I had finally made a spraybar setup that was slow enough for leaf litter to settle on the bottom, but overnight the leaves blew away and made a liar of me 🙄
A lot of cussing and sweating and a week later I finally have a solution, although it was not what I thought I would end up with.
I now have two "hobo lily pipes" made out of plastic bottles 😂
One is in the back right and the other one is left front.
Im really not a fan of glassware intake/outlets for aquariums, every time I just see the many pictures of aquarists' sliced up hands when they invariably break, and they require constant cleaning keep them from looking cruddy. They are also not DIY friendly and are made for open top tanks.
Both filters are running completely unthrottled now and the leaf litter sits securely on the bottom. Food also isnt blown everywhere which is a huge plus. The shrimp can walk comfortably across the sand without looking like they are working on their cardio.
I find it a bit amusing that aquascapers who are so concerned with maximum flow and beastly filters are using an outlet that is apparently great for making gentle flow 😉
Ive ordered a couple of acrylic lily pipe ends from Aliexpress to de-hoboify my setup slightly, but as usual they will take a while to arrive.
Until then the bottle pipes will see me through 😄
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My Loricaria simillima (gothsticks) have ever since I added them to the main tank insisted on taking up residence in the left hand side of the tank. This is all fine and good I suppose, except that I am rapidly running out of substrate space with all these happily growing plants. Every time I try to place a few plants over in their area they get immensely offended by this obstruction and start thrashing through the plants and angrily swimming up the glass to get where they want to go. They also want their area to be a little bit shaded but not by leaves because that is apparently "too in the way" 🙄 So after a little bit of trial back and forth like this, I remember I have a U shaped piece of mopani wood in my hardscape hoard that I could make into a nice secluded garage for them. I even put the Windelow ferns on top of the wood, freeing up further space. In front of the wood I made an open sandy area where I can put their food, so that I wont have to feed them so close to the filter intake. After rearranging I patted myself on the back and went to bed, expecting them to be happily resting under the wood the next morning.

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The gothsticks seem to hate the secluded garage and are now congregating in the sandy area in front of it.

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Ah the joys of fishkeeping. At least they are easier to feed here.
 
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A few bonus pictures of the inmates taken this afternoon :snaphappy:

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There was a bit of a fishstick smorgasbord happening at dinnertime.

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An oto searches the leaves for food with the help of a shrimp.

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Even the Rineloricaria made an appearance.

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Bought a few amanos this week, they are still quite young, almost the same size as the neocaridina. Hope they like thread algae :happy:

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Who could resist this face :pompus:
 
The Hygrophila pinnatifida has gotten its own "floating" island made out of a bit of redmoor wood fastened to the background with a suction cup....Id like to monitor closely how its doing and im sure there are readers here who are equally interested
I am standing on the side of the playing field cheering the HP on! There was some on sale in the forum today which I happened to see in the 7 minute window before it was snapped up, and I was thinking to myself, if Hufsa's survives, then maybe....

Here is the legally required FTS
We expect no less. I love the way the home made bottle-top intake/outlet look so similar to the ADA glassware - it's satire in a fish tank! You should keep them as a post-modern artistic statement.
Spectacular fish photos as always. Keep 'em coming!

Simon
 
Every day since sunday I have been changing 25% water to try to slowly bring down my ~60 ppm nitrate** and almost 200 TDS after my three weeks of skipping on waterchanges.
(**Usual disclaimers about test kits apply, not to be taken orally, may cause constipation and is known by the state of California to cause cancer.)
Now that we have that out of the way, lets continue 😁

25% water changes seems to avoid triggering the stress molting of the shrimp, im seeing way less empty molts floating around in general and the shrimp population looks to be higher than it has been in a long time. Together with slower flow on the substrate and the tasty leaf litter, the shrimp seem to be super happy.
To be honest I hadnt really realised they were any kind of un-happy, but seeing them now its clear they are feeling more at home.

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I was due any of these days to retest my nitrates, as I wanted to get down to around ~10-15 ppm nitrates so I have some elbow room again.
However I seem to have gone and done a Hufsa (TM) impatient thing instead.
I was servicing a filter and found myself picking small bits of Eheim Substrat out of the sponges and pouring out dissolved Substrat powder from the canister bottom for the n'th time.
This was when I decided I had had enough of this rubbish biomedia, and wanted to keep only Siporax.
Now, dont get me wrong here, there is nothing special about Siporax, and the Eheim Substrat is probably a perfectly fine* filter media, in fact im pretty sure you could cycle your grandmas old stockings and still get perfectly good filter media out of it.
My issue with the Substrat is that it seems to be -entirely opposed to existing-* and I didnt feel like fighting it any more.

So I set about sorting Substrat from Siporax, that I had of course mixed together earlier to try to get the Substrat seeded quicker.
I hung the Substrat in filter bags in my tank, and am planning to take them out one by one over time.
I dont know if the Substrat has had enough time to host much of my archaea/bacteria, I dont know how effective they are hanging in the flow like this, but I do know I end up kicking myself every time I endanger my fish and i am a very nervous nelly, so I will keep them there for a bit just to be safe(r).
Since these sort of shenanigans tend to negatively affect the balance of my tank I will continue changing water daily for a little while longer.

It struck me the other day that maybe the reason my fish react so strongly to nitrite is because of my soft water?
I know salt (NaCl) protects against nitrite poisoning just because ~"it occupies the same space" in the gills as nitrite, but does the same apply to calcium and the other stuff that is in hard water?
I think a few times I have read here someone saying "oh yeah I have a small reading for nitrite, 0.5 ppm" but their fish make it through.
If my water tested 0.5 ppm for nitrite all my fish would already be floating belly up at the surface 😲
Or maybe im just imagining things :cyclops:

bottle-top intake/outlet ... You should keep them as a post-modern artistic statement.
Sometimes I feel like being a bit counter-culture to all the high gloss and perfection of aquascaping.
Like, "Look at how shite this is! 😁 Youre welcome"

Its probably important to show that it doesnt always look great and thats okay. Especially for beginners ☺️

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Ill end the post with a picture of little Gary.
I dont have any kids to blame the name on, I just like Spongebob 😄
 
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Hi all,
I know salt (NaCl) protects against nitrite poisoning just because ~"it occupies the same space" in the gills as nitrite, but does the same apply to calcium and the other stuff that is in hard water?
Calcium (Ca++) definitely wouldn't have any effect, because we are only interested in the anions, NO2- and Cl-. After that <"it is just a numbers game">, if you have enough Cl- ions in solution the "next bus (ion)" is, nearly always, going to be a Cl- ion, rather than a NO2- ion.

My guess why the HCO3- ion is less "successful" is just down to the limited solubility of carbonate compounds. You can dissolved a lot of NaCl in water (~all chlorine and sodium compounds <"are soluble">), but a relatively small amounts of HCO3- ions where any group II metal ions are in solution.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi all,
You had me up to HCO3-
The "bicarbonate ion", the <"form of TIC you have is pH dependent">, and you only get the carbonate ion (CO3--) in solution in very alkaline conditions.
Also group 2 metal ions?
<"Group II metals are the "Alkaline Earth" metals"> like calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg). All the metals with a valency greater than one (everything <"except sodium (Na+) etc)"> tend to form insoluble compounds.
what about sulfate?
I'm going to say that, even though it is divalent anion (SO4--), it will have the same effect as chlorine (Cl-), but I don't actually know the answer.

cheers Darrel
 
Journal been without an update for a little bit, but im sure youve seen me lurking around the forum (ranting and raving about lights and CO2) :oldman:

The filter media switchemaroo went perfectly smooth, I think the Eheim Substrat hadnt had time to take on much of the workload yet, so I didnt get any spike when I took it out.

Ive done a few changes in the past weeks, right after the last post I changed up the layout of the plants yet again, and got some of the newly bought trident fern mounted on the back wall. The tank suddenly felt a lot more grown in, and looked so much better. Ive hated how bare the upper area of the tank has looked for so long. The boraras were very happy with the choices, they took up territories in the plants immediately and got much redder. They had been pale and unhappily surfing the glass for several weeks, so I was very relieved to see them finally settle down. I dont know what caused the surfing to start, but it seems they didnt feel safe enough. Having upper areas of the tank planted seems really important for them.

Ive been mulling over my stocking for a while, trying to decide which species to keep. Three groups of fishsticks would have been too much in the long run, and the goth fishsticks stood out to me as my clear favorites. The Rineloricaria are very pleasant fish but werent out much and didnt have much personality, which made it feel like it was stocking load taken up with no big return for it. The Sturisoma had large personalities but were getting increasingly pushy around feeding time, and I was having trouble feeding the Loricaria enough without the Sturisoma looking like they were 384 months pregnant.
So all 4 Sturisoma and 4 Rineloricaria were taken back to the store, where I have no doubt they will find new homes soon. Im grateful for being able to try a few species and get to know them this way. I do try to avoid doing it, but in this case it allowed me to learn which species I liked the most and was most suited for my tank and other tankmates.
The tank was immediately a lot calmer after, and now I can leave some food out for the Loricaria and they can spend a few hours eating. That sounds like a lot, but one of them is uh.. lets say not the brightest bulb in the lamp and needs some time to find out just which direction to go in while his buddies are already eating.
My otos have also come out more after the Sturisoma left, so I think they felt a little bit pushed around.

Speaking of otos, someone has been eating my Hygrophila polysperma. A week and a half ago I saw one leaf with the very characteristic rasped "pleco" damage.
Ive had the occasional nibbled leaf before on plants, usually when I havent been very good at all with providing the tank with veggies.
Ive never caught anyone in the act, before the suspects were Otos or Sturisoma, and now its Otos or Amanos, but I think its the Otos.
I know they're said not to eat plants, but im not convinced.
Any way, I think its fair play they let me know they're unhappy with my level of service.
I said to myself I would do it "soon", and soon quickly turned into a week.
..It has been very rough on the polysperma.
They finally got a piece of sweet potato yesterday and the otos have been all over it. When they're not eating they're sleeping on it :lol:

My goal to reduce the TDS has been reached, even if it took me a little longer than planned to get there.
Im trying to forgive myself for not doing water changes when im not feeling well, sometimes you just cant physically do all the things you want to do.
But doing 25% changes every now and then when I have been able to, TDS is now 155 in the tank vs 130 in the water change barrel.
Close enough I think.
I havent done any testing but I know my nitrates are lower, as my Nesaea has turned a more pink shade instead of yellow.
I kinda prefer the yellow but id rather have clean water for my inmates.
None of the shrimp have passed away from any of the water changes, even when I did them every day.
So it seems smaller changes works, and ive also been matching the temperature better so now its within 1 degree of tank and barrel.

On the 22nd I increased the light period to 12 hours on the recommendations of @dw1305 and Christel. Today I unfortunately had to turn it back down again as it seems to have increased the growth of thread algae in my tank. Either this is the cause, or the cause is the changes in flow from the hobo lilypipes. But the time of algae growth increase matches better with the lighting change. A bit of a shame, I would have liked to have 12 hours. Ambient light is ever increasing as we get closer to summer, and my plants notice it for sure in the morning.
I will probably try 12 hours again in the future, but for now im going back to 10.

Other than that not much has changed, plants have been growing and getting on as normal.
The Nesaea is happily growing in the Bolbitis bush. When it was getting close to the surface this week I saw the plant start to twist and curl again, so I think the symptoms I saw in it before is due to too bright light at the surface. This is why I want a shallow tank, if I decrease the light the plants near the surface will probably not run out of carbon so badly they stunt and twist, but it makes it too dim all the way down at the substrate.
A shallow tank would mean the lighting level is more even between top and bottom of tank.

@Karmicnull will probably want to know about the pinnatifida, I havent got any pictures at the moment, but its putting out new leaves and growing a lot of roots. Its absorbing many of its old leaves, at a fairly rapid pace. It was grown in a CO2 tank, so the transition from that may be contributing to the shedding, who knows. Im usually foolishly optimistic about growing stuff people tell me I shouldnt be able to grow, but this one im starting to be unsure. Right now the rate of shedding is outpacing the growth of new leaves, but we will see. Hopefully it will take off a bit more once it feels it has satisfactorily rooted itself. Maybe it was a good thing you didnt listen to me and buy that batch of pinnatifida after all :lol: Ill try to get some photos soonish, for scientific purposes.
 
Im usually foolishly optimistic about growing stuff people tell me I shouldnt be able to grow
Haha I think this is something all us low tech folks do from time to time. I think we see the "requires medium light/medium co2" and think "yeah I can supply that".
I've been trying with pinnatifida for a month or two and it seems to follow the same path as yours, goes ok at the beginning and then slowly looses its lower leaves, I finally put the last solitary stem out its misery last weekend.

I'm having limited success with rotala hong-kong, even managed to trim and replant some of the stems, although admittedly it looks a shadow of its former self from when it was grown in a co2 injected tank.
 
I saw Bolbitis being classified as Medium difficulty, a plant that dominates fish store tanks where only algae grows and plants go to die.
I failed growing Rotala rotundifolia which is supposed to be super easy, Staurogyne also didnt like my tank.
Pogostemon, Nesaea and Blyxa are not supposed to like my tank but they do, all medium difficulty.
Even Hydrocotyle Tripartita is classified as Medium difficulty by Tropica, but ive never seen it being anything other than annoyingly weedy in everyones tanks.
People say you cant grow x and y without injected CO2 which just makes me want to prove them wrong.
With all that Ive decided im gonna try to grow the plants I like the look of, and if it works it works, and if it doesnt then ill know it doesnt work for me.
 
A few bonus pictures of the inmates taken this afternoon :snaphappy:

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There was a bit of a fishstick smorgasbord happening at dinnertime.

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An oto searches the leaves for food with the help of a shrimp.

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Even the Rineloricaria made an appearance.

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Bought a few amanos this week, they are still quite young, almost the same size as the neocaridina. Hope they like thread algae :happy:

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Who could resist this face :pompus:

Great pictures @Hufsa - I missed this update.

That little oto is a beauty - I wanted to get some of those Zebra types previously, but my LFS wanted £15 for each one :eek:
 
That little oto is a beauty - I wanted to get some of those Zebra types previously, but my LFS wanted £15 for each one :eek:
Thank you, yes they are really gorgeous. That is around what I had to pay for them, they are a bit of an investment indeed.
The price was the main reason they remained on my wishlist for so many years.
I assume they are all wild caught like other otos, may be that there are a lot less of them in the wild?
I like that they all have unique patterns, so you can tell the individuals apart with some practice.
This group was also a lot more outgoing and easier to feed than the regular otos I had before, although that could have been just pure luck.
 
A picture dump today

Here you can see clearly the damage on the H. polysperma.
From above you can see there is a big difference between the plant breaking down its old leaves (circled in red), vs grazing damage (blue).
Yellow circle shows a combination of old leaves deteriorating and fish grazing at the same time.
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I think the 50% increase in iron I did wasnt quite enough, the red arrow points to the newest leaf of the A. coffefolia.
You can see it looks better than the second latest leaf, in the middle bottom of the image. But its still a bit chlorotic looking.
Ill bump the iron and traces up another 50% today and then we can see what the next leaf looks like.
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All the java ferns also have light tips, im not talking about the transparent tips, thats normal on growing leaves. But they are too light compared to the rest of the plant.
The Ludwigia Super Red is not super happy, but its hanging in there. It looks a bit messy because some stems came loose when I was pulling out thread algae and I had to replant them. The Hydrocotyle tripartita got a big trim, removed almost 2/3 of it.
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Slightly unhappy Nesaea 😁 In the first image I have circled how the symptoms look when they start out, leaf curving to the side, curling up of edges, whole thing looking a bit off. Then as it gets too close to the light (gets more light than it has CO2 to support) it will look like the ones in the second picture. Look how amazingly twisty and unhappy the growing tip in the center got 😂 The ones beside it have turned a pinker shade, I assume because of the lower nitrates. These also look a little bit chlorotic.
I enjoy feeling like I have a good enough handle on things now to not need to freak out about a little deficiency. Its really not a big deal after all.
Just to drive the point home, nothing changed fertilizer wise when the plants curled up like this, this has nothing to do with ferts, and everything to do with CO2.
Just because I dont inject it doesnt mean its not the biggest player in the tank.
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My sessiliflora sulking under one of the hobo lilypipes. It gets less flow and less light than its used to, so its not looking its best.
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Duckweed index still pretty good, it would seem a slight iron deficiency may not show up on the floaters as clearly as on some of the other plants.
It seems possible to me that the floaters are just the fastest at grabbing what I dose, and leaving the slower growers to fight for the leftovers.
I still think the frogbit could be an overall darker green though 🤔
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Now for the pinnatifida, not exactly anything to brag about at the moment 😅
I think every growing shoot has grown exactly 2 leaves since last time. Not the Usain Bolt of plant growth right here.
You can see the older leaves are full of holes and very unhappy.
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The pictures from the side always lie, and make the tops of the plants look washed out.
think its just how the camera captures the lights that do it, because it doesnt look like this in reality.
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A week ago I came across an online store selling a pot of alleged Peacock moss, a Taxiphyllum species/variant I have always wanted. A few local hobbyists used to keep something they called Peacock moss many years ago. It was almost exactly like java moss, except much much prettier in growth habit, and would grow lovely frondy puffs without trimming or much user input at all. Now if youre not aware, ID'ing moss is a bit of a cluster***k, almost but not quite as bad as trying to ID Bucephalandra. So theres absolutely no guarantee what I bought is peacock moss, theres no guarantee what the hobbyists back then called peacock moss was actually peacock moss, theres no guarantee peacock moss exists, and so on. Some say its just Spiky moss, but Spiky moss doesnt look like the moss from back when in my opinion. Its entirely possible im chasing a mossy unicorn. But lets see what this thing grows into. The moss that had grown in the pot was just single strands, which was a bit alarming. Im hoping thats just the emersed growth habit. The little growth that ive had so far in my tanks has also just been straight up. This will be a bit of a nailbiter I think. Its also not very pleasant to touch, which makes me wonder if its not Taxiphyllum at all.. Anyway I should stop rambling about moss for now :crazy:


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Full tank shot so I dont get the police on my case 😉😁
The two floating containers are inhabited by some shrimp im trying to sell.
The containers were previously above the Hygrophila polysperma, which made it even more sad.
Ill try to keep them in the middle for now and see if the plant perks up a bit.
Hope I can get rid of the excess shrimp soon, cause the containers are really in the way.
 
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Massive picture dump today, make sure youre not on a metered network! ;)

Sorry about the quality/focus of some of the pictures, I only use my phone which is quite some years old. And it doesnt like macro photography at all.
A better camera will definitely be a priority when this old phone goes to meet its maker :snaphappy:

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C. pygmaeus fry venturing out of the leaf litter

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@ScaperJoe some shrimp for you to practice sexing ;)

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One of the lovely brown short sand snails
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My newly adopted elephant snail, Sir Snootentoot
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I was going to update with a few plant pictures this past sunday, mostly to keep @Karmicnull updated on the pinnatifida project.
I took the photos, waited for them to be uploaded to the computer and then promptly forgot about the whole thing until now :shy:

The pictures didnt turn out the best and it felt like too much work to crop them, so I am just posting them as they are. Sorry about that, I havent been feeling well lately.

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Tank still looks a lot like a plant holding facility I think, progress with setting up the replacement tank is painfully slow but im choosing not to stress about it.
All the fish are very happy and the plants are growing fine so there is no emergency.

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I took the photos before I removed any thread algae. This was about a week or maybe two of buildup.
I dont think any tank has absolutely zero algae, algae is everywhere to some degree, unless your tank is a petri dish in a sterile lab.
Some tanks have very little algae, and some have a bit more, but I suspect almost everyone needs to remove a little bit now and then.
So this is how much I have, I figure why not show it.

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I got my first ever Cryptocoryne a little while ago. I have always been a bit apprehensive to try them because of their tendency to melt and that they dont like to be moved.
I think we all know at this point how much I like moving things around.
A second reason is because I hadnt come across one I felt was worth the hassle when there were other similar looking plants that were less picky.
This one was already transitioned but appeared to be very slowly dying in the shop.
I had monitored it there for many months, reluctant to pull the trigger, but this time I decided I would try to rescue it since it seemed like no one else were going to buy it.
This is Cryptocoryne striolata 'tiger', which I have now come to understand is not a very common variety.
Ive just left it wedged between some java ferns, because all my nutrients are in the water column and not in my inert substrate.
It appears to have woken up, is putting out some new roots and a new boldly patterned leaf is forming.

After I bought the Cryptocoryne I broke one of my own principles and bought a few rhizomes of various rare bucephalandra.
They were clearly wild collected plants, and I have no way to know if they were sustainably collected or not. Exactly the sort of thing I wanted to avoid supporting.
But they too had been languishing in the shop for a long time, some species had completely disintegrated, and many others were covered in ever increasing amounts of algae. Very few appeared to be putting out any new leaves, and I worried it would only be a matter of time until they also rotted.
So I bought a small portion of a handful of varieties, vowing to do my best to keep them growing well and to try to spread them to other hobbyists.

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One of the varieties with large black leaves 'Black Venti', appears to be a fast grower. Its in the background here behind two clumps of Kedagang from Tropica. Pretty much as soon as it was put in my tank it sprung into action and started growing new, wonderfully metallic leaves. It almost seems to grow faster than the Kedagang, which is known to be a very rapidly growing species of Bucephalandra. Im amazed by these buces ability to remain dormant in suboptimal conditions for such a long time, before turning around and start growing again basically at a moments notice.

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My Anubias coffeefolia has put out another new leaf, this one looks much less chlorotic than the first two. This should mean the tank is at a better level of iron/traces now.

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Hygrophila difformis has stopped being eaten and is recovering nicely, which reminds me I need to feed the fish another sweet potato again soon..

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I at some point aquired some Ceratopteris thalictroides.
I dont remember what I was planning to do with this, maybe just another fast growing bushy thing 🥴 Cant hurt.

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Nesaea still OK, just need to keep it trimmed low enough so it doesnt choke itself near the light.

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My moss has grown a fair bit. I have decided not to trim it so I can see what the natural growth pattern is.

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My duckweed index, it doesnt seem -as- happy now as it was before. This may have been partially because it was released into the tank to survive on its own, and getting beat up a little bit by the outlets. Another possible cause could be the fert change, less nitrate and phosphate. I havent measured the nitrate to check, I probably will at some point.

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And lastly the pinnatifida. It has stopped rapidly shedding old leaves, which seems like a good thing.
It does seem more stable now, but still think it will take a while to see if the growth can outpace the decay of old leaves.

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What a treat, I just clicked on this thread and realised I hadn't read a whole page of posts!! I love this tank and all the shenanigans, lovely fish and lovely plants and experimentation. What's the name of that brown snail from 2 posts ago (not the rabbit)? It's very nice 👀

I find pinnatifida does the same thing in my lowtech rainwater, it's nice as a small ground plant, but doesn't seem to get bigger than that. It died in my lowtech tapwater, so it's not the worst outcome!
 
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