This tank started out very differently from where it is now. I started out with low tech but was not very successful with it. I struggled with
Rotala rotundifolia which by all accounts ought to have been easy to grow in low tech conditions. They come to me with big leaves and brilliant colours and slowly turn into twigs under my care. I thought it was the lack of CO2 that did them in, so I eventually started dabbling in CO2. It did improve their health, but only marginally. I had a glorious bush of trident fern (which eventually started melting en masse, I still don't know why), but my
Rotala remain small and poorly. Even after a rescape when I got rid of all the hardscape and went with stems only, a good number of the
Rotala would stunt a lot.
During this time I would dose a lot of fertiliser as I was under the impression that stems being fast growers would need a lot of fertiliser. I dosed APT (and previously Tropica) at full concentration daily. For such a tiny tank it was a lot of fertiliser. The stunting didn't stop.
I am dosing
far less than I used to in this current scape and the plants are growing a lot better than my first attempts but I am starting to tire of the maintenance. If I could simply keep trimming the plants perpetually then I could see myself maintaining this layout for a very long time. However as we know, the bottom parts don't stay healthy forever and eventually I will need to pull everything out and replant the healthy tops, which makes a huge mess and is incredibly time consuming, even for a tank this small. I've also let it go without a water change for about 3 weeks now and I finally did one yesterday. I didn't trim it.
I've also noticed that some of the plants don't grow back so healthy anymore. I looked at past pictures and it is like night and day. My Limnophila aromatica seems to be suffering. It could be because the scape and soil are more than a year old and it might be time to fertilise the substrate. I do have some root tabs so I might try fertilising just that one part of the tank.
Anyway, I think it might nearly be time for me to tear this scape down and start over with something lower maintenance. It is really overgrown at the moment but I am tired lol. I've maintained this scape for nearly a year and a half now and I have been really pleased with it, to be able to grow them this well in over 30
°C. But I wonder if perhaps I enjoy fish more than plants as I will also admit that I have been giving my other fish focused tank more attention
. In the meantime, I took a picture.
20241110_180314 by
Lenny Lim, on Flickr