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Week Eight - March
20th, 2004
(Sorry, one day late!)
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| Things have now reached that stage that I'm having to trim
and pinch off some of the tops of the more aggressive and adventurous plants... I'm
pulling fewer and fewer deal leaves from the surface - the plants seem to be doing very
well overall. The lily on the stump is growing steadily, the two Ozelot swords are
putting forth lots of new leaves, and almost everything is getting steadily
taller. The Japanese Rushes (acorus pusillus) in front of the stump are not doing that great. They seem to be okay, but have lots of yellow, and some white furry stuff that seems to be a sort of root system. They are growing into the gravel, but not doing as well as I'd hoped. The plants that I mail-ordered came with three little Lily plants, two of which just didn't survive. The third one, however, appears to be making a spirited attempt to come forth again, there's lots of little brown pointy leaves coming up from the gravel where I put it - still can't see it in the picture, though. The Hygrophila Rosanervis and the Limnophilia sessiliflora are both getting much, much bigger than I expected. I understood that these would be good mid-ground filler plants - well, not in this tank! A couple of the Hygro's have reached the surface (more than doubling their height in two weeks!) and the taller of the two Limno's are only an inch short of that. All of those plants are showing excellent color, just as I'd hoped. The Ozelot Sword is also showing very good color. The Limno is the two stem plants just to the right of center, with the round, almost fluffy-looking fronds. These plants are really interesting in that the fronds actually close up at night, and then reopen in the morning. The big red Lily plants seem to do so as well. The Saggitaria sublata (tall, thin bright green leaves in the right rear) is getting very tall, and is rapidly spreading across the gravel from it's original location. I had wondered why the mail order selection only provided a couple of those - now I understand. If I had gotten a lot of them to start with, they might have just taken over the tank. I'd say that it has at least tripled in the two weeks since I got it. The anacharis is also doing well, and I've had to pinch the tops of of a couple strands already. The larger of the two Ozelot Swords has this big stem coming up - I had hoped that stem would reach the surface and bloom, but no such luck. Mostly it seems to be just putting out more leaves. I'm not really sure what to do with the stem - it looks kinda odd and it's sticking right up into the main outlet stream from the canister filter, so it's constantly 'waving in the breeze'. It's also grown up out of the light beams from the lighting (the light fixtures use reflectors that are quite focussed), so all of its leaves are mostly in shadow. I'm thinking about pinching it off and seeing it it will root out on it's own and give me a couple more sword plants. I have moved one of the three didiplis diandra from the back up to the front, where it should get more light and more water movement - hopefully it'll start taking off now that it's out from under those other, more aggressive plants. That's about it for this week. All of the little baby Mollies have pretty much vanished - but I don't know if that's because the bigger fish got them, or if they are just really, really hiding to keep from being 'got'. I probably won't know until any survivors get big enough to be out of danger and come out again. Of course, if that happens, I'm going to have rather a lot of black Mollies... That's it for this week!
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