[frogmanjared]

Okay, so after my endler's died of a fungal outbreak over winter break (I was devestated... they were forming nice, long sword tails, some up to 1 cm!) I decided to try plants other than hornwort. Up until now, I've been to embarassed to post any pics because of how great all of your tanks look. But compared to plantless tanks, I'll take any plants I can get! Now I will show you the "evolution line" of my 10 gal. I was too lazy to try and fix the substrate, but it's sand on the bottom, and flourite on top. The plants don't seem to mind, as some of my crypts the other day had roots well over a foot and a half.

This is what the tank looked like after clearing out the fungus: plants included, cryptocoryne (brown maybe?), a few java ferns, red ozelot sword, from the wild: elodea canadensis, and a brassicaceae (unkown species)


I added a fake rock structure and pulled out the fake plants, put the java ferns on it. I also added a tiny nuphar rhizome form a lake, but it only ever got to be about 3 inches tall (too warm I think)


It remained pretty untouched until a week ago when I got Braziallian penywort. The addition of CO2 made my plants grow quite well. I also bought a 8,000K bulb. It's a little pink, but my ferns and pennywort are pearling better now. My old bulb was the one that came with the top 2 years ago!


Then yesterday I got some ottos and egersia densa, and rescaped the whole thing. The one crypt that I kept is starting to flower, so hopefully the moving won't stop it from doing so. The otto's are actually eating the cyano!!! I moved the filter to the center of the tank, now there aren't as many dead flow areas.


So hopefully when I move out of this place, and into our apartment after we get married, the tank will look better.

The 5 gal hex that is at my fiance's place, it too needs a new bulb: