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Week Nine - March 27th, 2004
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| Again, almost everything in the tank is doing very, very
well. Exceptions to this are: the didiplis diandra, the Acorus Pusilus and the Cryptocorne walkeri. The
didiplis has pretty much just turned black and rotted away. I've still got a few
tops, but I don't really expect them to survive. The Acorus and Crypt are surviving,
but not really doing much more than that. I'm hoping that they'll perk up over time.
I'm particularly hopeful that the Acorus will pick up, as it's a good
foreground plant and would fill in nicely. A nice surprise has been that two of the Lilies I got from AAG and I thought were dead have actually started putting out leaves. They aren't going very fast, but they are there and making an effort - so we'll have to see how they do. If you look at the progress pictures, almost everything has reached the surface now. I spent a lot of time today cleaning the surface of floaters, and 'topping' a number of plants, including the Anacharis, the Limnophila, and the Sagittaria subulata. I was able to get enough good tops off the Limnophila to bunch them up in a zinc band, and I've dropped them into a differerent part of the tank to see if they'll root. I did the same with a bunch of Anacharis - which should take off, I think. Tomorrow I'll do the weekly water change and add in some more liquid fertilizer, and we'll see how it all looks next week. I finally cut the adventitous limb from the larger Ozelot Sword. It had three sets of buds that were actively putting out leaves and roots, so chopped the stem up, leaving each set of buds a length of stem, and then replanted them all across the front of the tank. Now we'll see if they'll continue to grow and become new plants. I spoke with one of the LFS today - they're more than happy to take trade-ins of plants from locals, so with luck, if I can get some of these things to start rooting, I'll be able to trade them in on some fore- and midground plants to fill in with - and possibly some shorter plants that like low light that can grow in the shadows around the bases of the taller plants... I don't talk about the fish much - they're all doing fine, although I found the remains of a dead loach today. I have a feeling that it was having trouble leftover from the big Ich problem a while back. Everyone else seems very happy - the angelfish are growing nicely, and a couple of them are looking really good - very pretty fish considering that they were $4 generics from the LFS. A friend of mine had to take one of his tank down this week - the only fish he had left was an old plecostomus. The water in that tank hadn't been changed literally in years. I agreed to take the pleco - and spent an entire evening trying to acclimate it to my tank as gently as possible. When I finally dumped him in, he turned very pale and just lay around for a long time - but now he's just having a wonderful time. He's very active - even during the day you can see him wandering around looking for things to eat. The tank has only minimal algae, so I'm throwing in disks periodically to keep the plecos (three) and otocinculus (five or six) happy. That's about it for this week! Next week I'll probably have to 'top' most of the Hygro's, they're all starting to bend over at the surface. That's it! See you next week! |