I am afraid I am not reall happy with the way the tank looks right now. It just seems cluttered. A black Background would help a lot, but I can't think of a way to do that now without breaking the tank down, which I am not thrilled about doing. I picked up some HC (Thanks Baj). It was in great shape. I am hoping it will fill in. It seems that it is at best stagnate. I also picked up some Christmas Moss from Capricorn77. He did a great job of shipping it and it was in wonderful shape. I made a new moss wall with it. I filled it in a little thicker than I had done with the Java Moss, so hopefully it grows more evenly. I modified the
moss wall design by "Troy McClure." I bought some super strong magnets from Ebay. The great thing is they had a hole in the middle of them, so they were easy to atach to the Cross stitching plastic. I just sewed them on. Much easier than Super Glue. I also used 8 of them becaus my first wall wasn't staying flush with the glass, and I think I lost an otto behind it.
When I was rearranging the Java Moss wall I brushed my hand agains the
riccia, and a big clump of it broke off. It looked funny with a hole in the middle so I brushed my hand over the rest of it to break of the majority of it. There is still a bunch of little pieces so I think it will regrow quickly. I now have a bunch of little branches floating on the surface. I don't think this is a problem, and I am thinking of some uses for it.
The Parrot's Feather is the big surprise for me. I have read in many places that it is not supposed to be fully submerged, and I am pretty sure it was originally emerged growth I added to the tank, but it seems to be doing very well. I am trimming it every week. It is the big change in the before and after image. What is odd is the difference in the stems. Some of the tips are bright green, some brownish (but not melting) and some are pink.
My Ludwiga (Repens I think) Is doing VERY poorly, and I think it is headed to the garbage if I can't figure out how to grow it better. It is probalby too little light, because I moved a single stalk to the middle of the tank and it seems to be doing well. They may be planted to close together.
The other big change was moving the "Java Fern Lava Rock Thing" to the left, and moving the Dwarf Lily. I think that makes the tank look a little better. Now I just need to work on the foreground.
Here are the pics:
Before the trimming yesterday:
Today:
Another bit of news. I saw my first shrimplet in this tank. It is hard to find them in a 55g. Any ideas about how many I can get in here? The quality is not great.
This surprised me. over three days I watched my outflow bar get covered in some sort of fuzz algae. I was going to clean it off, because nothing seemed to be touching it until about the fifth day, when there was a near perfect square missing. Each day there has been another chunk taken out of it. Now all that is left is this. It seems like something was cultivating it. That is the reflection on the right. last Monday the entire thing was covered that thickly.
Thanks for taking a look. Let me know if you have any pointers.