New plants
At the back with the pointed leaves are Hygrophilia augustifolia
Mid/back with the lily-pad type leaves are the very magical American pennywort - I love these they look so pretty and like a fairytale.
Foreground flat-leaved are water cress - I’m not impressed by these, I feel they may get messy. And foreground bushy are Crassula hekmsii - I love these but so do my snails who keep burrowing under and I find them floating! You can buy them as a mat which I may well do if it helps keep them anchored until the have a chance to grip themselves.
Red plants are a red ivy - it arrived and all its leaves had fallen off, it should pick up if its anything like outdoor ivy.
Finally floating are salvinia natans which are amazing and providing shelter from the lights (to stop algae again).
Today i received some more plants - a Nuphar japonicum which was a bit sorry for itself so we’ll see if it survives, some Eichhornia azurea which are a bit ugly but clumped together make good cover and some Cyperus helferi which are grass-like.
Despite all this - 32 plants in all - my tank feels underplanted. I’ll see how these grow and then perhaps buy more!
I’ve been slimed! Slime algae has overtaken my tank and I’ve been battling for the past few weeks. I have done everything it says - reduce the amount of time lights are on, reduce the fish food, more frequent water changes - but to no avail.
So today I deep an aquarium ‘deep clean’ and hope I can get on top of this. This involved:
Taking out the ornaments and washing separately with a slime algae control - this stuff is evil, it says on the side that it kills snails and then if you read all the instructions you realise it is dangerous to plants and fish too!
Removing all the plants. Most were covered in slime and struggling. Dying plants contribute to algae.
Syphoning out half of the water and scrubbing the sides of the tank.
Planting in lots of new plants - the idea being that lots of healthy plants will take all the nutrients that the algae is currently thriving on. Key to these are some floating plants that will shade the tank from the lights, again reducing the light the algae can use to grow.
I’ve added in a CO2 unit to help the plants again. Contrary to what you would think, it is important to still feed the plants - adding nutrients to a tank seems wrong when it is excess nutrients that are the cause of algae! But plants need them. I added some tablets in the gravel as I planted this time too.
Now its all done the lights will stay off for 3 days, another water change on Tuesday and again when I get more plants through (some were out of stock). Fish will get fed a minimum amount.
Amazingly one of my rabbit snails that I haven’t seen for 2 months has shown up, I’ve no idea where they hide!
Pictures of my new set up when the lights go back on on Tuesday.
The best thing is that I could take the pebbles weighting down the wood off as it no longer floats - huzzah!
I had a clear up of my plants to take out those affected by the hair algae and a bit of a move around.
The tall grass-like plant at the back (possibly Vallisneria) was doing well, and had grown up and the length of the tank, making it very shaded. The grass on the surface of the water had been affected by algae quite heavily. I thinned it out and took off the affected leaves.
The fuzzy Cabomba plants I mostly took out as they were really messy-looking. They attracted all the bits from the moss balls and all algae. Sadly I also took out all the Juncus as it was pale and unhappy-looking as well as covered in algae.
The low grass Lilaeopsis wasn’t doing too well either but I managed to save some and moved it to one corner.
I bought a new red plant - possibly a broad-leaved amazon sword - to fill the foreground a bit, plus more pebbles.
theratlady asked: I have a twenty-gallon tank. It's only inhabitants are a small school of zebra danios, and maybe a couple ghost shrimp. I never see the shrimp anymore, so I think the fish ate them. I'm using a gravel substrate, and I want to introduce live plants. What plants are good for beginners? How should I introduce them?
There is quite a narrow choice of aquatic plants for aquariums (but then I used to be a gardener so maybe its just me!). Just pick ones that you like - however I have struggled with feathery plants looking scruffy quickly. They may import snails on them - so pick them off and out of your tank as soon as you see them. You will need to add some fertiliser to help them grow - just like a garden plant!
After cleaning my tank as my ammonia was running a little high, I checked it again and bought 3 green tiger barbs (Puntius tetrazona)- the fish shop had a mixed tank of green and normal so that was fun for him wrangling them!
They are cheeky little things, happy to come to the front of the tank when I am there, fast to grab the food and here you can just see one of them with an algae wafer - meant for the catfish - carrying it around like a dog with a bone, with his friends badgering him for a go. I’m having to feed the catfish when the tank is dark so they have a chance of getting it.
I’ve had this long hair-like algae, dark green out of the water but looks black in the tank. The snails or catfish don’t touch it. I reduced the time my lights were on from 10 hours to 7 and a half, and pruned away the worst of it. What is left now has turned a lighter grey that some snails seem to be munching on.
I bought 5 golden barbs (Puntius semifasciolatus) last Tuesday but only 3 have survived. They were pretty small, so it must have been the stress. This one wasn’t eating and I was worried for her - she was eating food but spitting it out. I went away for a day and fully expected her dead when I came back. Happily she seems to have perked up - I suspect it is the holiday food stick I placed in the tank - it hasn’t fully dissolved and must be coming off in tiny bits small enough for her to get started eating again.
She looks a little unusual - as she has a deformity in her tail giving her a bend. When the aquatic store picked her into the bag they asked me if I wanted to change her but I like my animals as waifs and strays!
