A lot of pics in this one, sorry in advance for the rambling 😅
New FTS with the trimming that has been done on the right hand side.
I had to slow the roll on the Bolbitis from Darrel too, the biggest leaf I took off the one in the center measured 25 cm, I wonder how big they are planning to get?
Before the above FTS, the right hand corner had turned into this very lush and thick group of Blyxa japonica, Myriophyllum sp. Guyana and Pogostemon helferi.
The noodles were loving it, and spent most of their time snaking about in the thick undergrowth.
I even got this blurry picture of the very illusive Long Serpent. He is a beautiful fish, his sides shine a bright silvery golden color when the light hits it.
Shortly after this photo was taken he spotted me and darted off as usual 😅
Unfortunately sometimes when things are looking the most grown in and beautiful is also the time when trimming needs to be done. Im not gonna lie I really preferred how this corner looked before the trim, but the Blyxa was smushed up right against the glass, and the growth was beginning to choke itself out and rotting. The noodles were immensely offended when I started pulling out plants, and were shouting something about habitat destruction and violation of rights as they were darting for cover in other (obviously subpar) parts of the tank. I expect they will be calling for my resignation as town mayor any day now.
Tonina is a nice plant. Very nice. I didnt know what to expect when I got this one for the first time, the stems look like they might be very delicate, but they are actually quite wooden and strong. This plant is super well behaved, it grows straight up without any funny business. I never quite understood why people were talking about "well behaved" plants, or plants that are not very well behaved. But I sure understand now. Its so much easier to keep Tonina under control than say, Ludwigia palustris "Super Red", which branches and leans and goes every which way, shading its neighbors and generally being rowdy.
A lot of the time I find myself needing to trim a group of plants not because they are that overgrown, but rather because they are growing the wrong way or leaning and making some other plant unhappy. "Super Red" is a repeat offender and im thinking about getting rid of it entirely.
Earlier this week I got a package of plants from a very kind hobbyist. Ive been wanting Rotala rotundifolia "Blood Red SG" for a while, and Im fairly confident that this is the first time this plant is even in the country.
Unfortunately they had a pretty bad time in transit, and much of the plantmass was wilted.
But, in the very tips I saw some growth that looked like it might still have life left in it.
Hoping for a small miracle I carefully cleaned off the wilted leaves. Many of the stems were still firm, which is a good sign.
I put the mostly bare stems in my tank and hoped for the best. My shrimp went right to work and cleaned off any remaining dead tissue.
Its a little bit early to call it yet, but I think they may make it 😍
I love Ludwigia sp. Marilia, have I mentioned it before? Maybe a couple of times 😅
Bacopa caroliniana "Colorata" is starting to put on some color. Seems like a very uncomplicated plant so far.
Im not sure if ive even kept a Bacopa species before, they havent really interested me. But the whole family seem to be unfussy plants.
The difference between the "Colorata" variety and regular caroliniana is how pink they get and how easily they will do so.
Colorata will get solid pink in higher light, while caroliniana mostly gets pink on the tops only.
A stem of Pantanal, these are still not stable long term in my tank. This one came from the windowsill not too long ago.
The ones that were doing well a month ago stunted really badly after the trim and replant and most of them didnt recover.
Im very glad to have a backup culture of this plant.
The stems of L. glandulosa I got turned huge in diameter as expected, and I decided to keep just one stem because of the limited space. I really need one more meter of tank length to comfortably keep all of these plants of mine.
This one is recently replanted here, lets see how it tolerates being kept relatively short as a midground plant
It was located in front of the Crypt spiralis Red before, but they were almost the same color and looked terrible next to each other. At least until glandulosa decides to be more purple it needed to be moved somewhere else.
Its voicing its general displeasure at my current regime by twisting of the leaves. I have observed this symptom in several plant species over the past month.
Im not going to try to diagnose what is causing this specifically, because im not convinced that this is a productive thing to attempt to do.
Instead im going to focus on fixing the things that I already know are not where they need to be with my tank.
CO2 levels have not been stable because I havent been able to stay on top of evaporation, and I also feel like the flow in the tank is not quite where it used to be.
For example the bottom spray bar definitely needs to receive its ahem annual cleaning
The intake strainers are also super nasty and havent been cleaned in a while which definitely could affect flow.
There is of course also the lingering micro issue, although we are closer to solving it.
Sometimes you just have to do one thing at a time, and thats ok.
I have been dividing the plant trimming into more moderate sessions as im catching back up with tank maintenance, and still have a few bits left to do like cleaning the plumbing and another water change.
The water is pink right now which may be showing up in a few of the pictures.
In the bottom right of the above pic you can spot the Ludwigia polycarpa. The yellow color is still developing, but im liking this species so far.
It leans a bit but doesnt seem fussy. This one has also been showing a bit of twisting leaves like the glandulosa.
Its super stout and bushy and makes a perfect midground plant. I originally had three growing but needed more space as usual, so cut down to one.
Hygrophila pinnatifida "Uttara Kannada" is going well, had its first trim last week, I brutally cut any runner going somewhere its not supposed to, and took out all the main vertical shoots, but it looks like I missed one.
So far this plant seems super easy, sure is a contrast to how much difficulty I had when trying it low tech. I did hear that invitro or even better tank grown specimens are easier to take into low tech than emersed stems, and the latter is what I tried back then. It might have given me better odds but it does seem like this one just really wanted the CO2.
Its gonna be "fun" attempting to keep this one localized to the relatively small bit of wood it is attached to.
On the spray bar you can see a smattering of green spot algae and tiny beginnings of some serious BBA.
I havent really struggled a lot with green spot algae before, not that I can recall anyway. Ill be monitoring the amount of green spot with interest as my tank develops and goes through various changes
Have a fair bit of BBA as well, im currently ignoring it as best I can, and have decided to focus on other more pressing matters. My hope is that the BBA will just happen to disappear as I solve some of the other problems.
In the picture are my three biggest varieties of Bucephalandra, top one is Pearl Grey, right middle is Silver Grey and bottom left is Dark Achilles / Kishii / Skeleton King / etc.
These three are really coming into their own despite the unsightly BBA. They dont seem to respond to trimming the same or grow quite like the smaller varieties.
I have decided to treat them as rosette plants in a way, and they seem to like this. Ive had three flowers from the Pearl Grey and one from the Silver Grey. I pinched the latest round off as I would rather have more leaves.
They are getting really massive and I think they will be just stunning once the BBA stops growing. I especially like the color of new leaves on the Dark Achilles, they have an orange bronze ish hue and they glitter/shine in metallic orange, yellow and green that is more or less impossible to capture on a still photo. It contrasts really beautifully with the steely grey of the mature leaves.
Various plant health pics:
As you can see amongst other things the Tonina is really not a great color, but I am grateful that it is at least surviving ok despite the issue.
So its an issue but its not a "whole house is on fire" kind of issue. This gives me a lot more time to work on it.
The Rotala macrandra Mini Type 4 is growing ok, it doesnt look good but its not dying. (Talk about low standards
)
Color is not there, and theres a bit of curling and crumpling of the leaves.
This plant got the shortest straw and is not in a good position in the tank. Its way out on the right edge so flow is not super strong, light is not super strong and it has two really easy and happy neighbors in front of it that are super thick and block even more flow when they grow in. As if that wasnt enough it the creepy polysperma behind it keeps leaning over and breathing down its neck. A lot of the trimming I do of the Guyana and Polysperma is to keep them from infringing on the other plants around them. Guyana doesnt lean too badly it just gets super dense and branches a lot naturally.
RIP favorite kuhlii loach hangout corner. In the bottom left there is one bit of Ammannia pedicellata 'Golden' that decided to do a little bit of growing, but its probably not going to last.
I cleaned up some of the old growth around it and maybe the reshoots will do better. This plant seems to rely on its roots a lot which is why I havent disturbed the bushes in a while.
Kudos for not dying though, it looks absolutely hideous and it doesnt grow, but it stays around at least 😅 The yellow plant on the very bottom is a small bit of Cuba.
Cryptocoryne & friends corner is an absolute mess with tiny plants and BBA everywhere. Most of the big crypts are still sulking from being moved over here, a fair bit of general unhappiness. Interestingly I dont really seem to get melting plants in my tank, not even melting from these quite angry crypts. All the crypts I have have either already melted and regrown when they arrived at the pet store (all the Borneo ones), or came from invitro and didnt go through any melt. I have not purchased an emersed crypt yet, it would be interesting to see if that kind would also not melt.
I picked up around five small mystery crypts from my LFS a little while back, they were all from the tanks that contained the borneo crypts, but they were all way too small to tell which kinds they were.
Three of them have pulled ahead a little bit and seem to be growing a bit faster than the others. They are the type with the dark green slightly bullate leaf like the one in the center of the image.
I think the three dark green ones may be the kind that came in with the label "Sparta". It has been very difficult to find any information about this trade name, I have only managed to track down two or three pictures.
It seems to be a reddish brown to dark green crypt with long relatively slender leaves and strongly bullate leaf surface.
The fourth crypt looks like it might be another one of the "Queen Vandom" type, or perhaps the kind called "Nensies".
These names have also been very hard to find info about, but it seems like "Queen Vandom" and "Nensies" may be somewhat similar in appearance.
The fifth one is still too small to make any guesstimations.
The Bucephalandra BG2011/12 is doing fine and seems to be working overtime to pay back its debts to me. In addition to the main growing point its started three more along the older sections of the rhizome.
I have noticed sometimes the Buce seems to do this if you place the rhizome sideways or slightly upside down.
Im thinking of moving this one now so it gets more light and speeds up its growth a bit, but potentially having it covered in BBA makes me nervous. Then again there is BBA in this shaded corner also so I might as well.
Hymenasplenium obscurum has grown a nice big leaf and I hope the next one will be even bigger. I have plans to have a large group of this fern in the area in front of the Crypt spiralis Red, although it will need a root to sit on to prop it up a little.
I mentioned that I have a few new plants as well, they were ordered at the same time as the ones from the previous spree, but for various reasons took a little longer to arrive. They are;
Pteridophyta sp. "Niah"
Didymoglossum sp. "Buea Goliath" (I refuse to call this one Bolbitis sp. as that is just ridiculous)
Bucephalandra Moss
Fissidens sp. Miroshaki
Fissidens sp. Mallorca
+ no less than three gifts;
Crepidomanes sp. Vietnam II
Crystal Moss
Fissidens Nagasaki (I passed this one on to another moss collector as I already have quite a lot of Fissidens)
The following pictures are absolutely terrible and I refuse to retake them 😁
Both these Crepidomanes need better homes soon(TM)
Im very interested to see how some of these new "ferns" grow, like do they cling to the wood like Bolbitis and Java ferns do?
An interesting thing about Bolbitis heteroclita "Cuspidata" (that regular Bolbitis heudelotii cannot do), is that it can grow new plantlets from old fronds.
You may be able to spot some of the plantlets, especially the one on the very right.
The bit of much anticipated Fissidens sp. Miroshaki has been spread out on its own coconut, while the Fissidens sp Mallorca is bunking with Crepidomanes Vietnam II and Bucephalandra Moss.
Fissidens Miroshaki & Mallorca and Bucephalandra Moss & Crystal Moss seem like two pairs that seem quite similar. I know there is a subtle difference between Buce and Crystal moss, the former is slightly bigger and the latter is a bit more crinkly somehow. The Miroshaki and Mallorca I have found to be hard to tell apart in pictures, so I will be very interested to see how they both develop in my tank. Unless they turn out very distinct there is a high likelihood that I will pick my favorite kind from each pair and sell off the other.
The Anubias Mini Coin is doing well too, im letting it grow out a bit more. I want the pieces that I snip off to be big enough to be replanted on the coconut, so it needs a bit more time.
Vesicularia sp. "Tortoise" has grown out of the mesh, it really needs a trim if I want it to grow more branched and bushy. Its on my to-do list 😇
Im thinking of putting Weeping Moss back in the tank so I can compare the two. Maybe another piece to put on the glass 😘
New FTS with the trimming that has been done on the right hand side.
I had to slow the roll on the Bolbitis from Darrel too, the biggest leaf I took off the one in the center measured 25 cm, I wonder how big they are planning to get?
Before the above FTS, the right hand corner had turned into this very lush and thick group of Blyxa japonica, Myriophyllum sp. Guyana and Pogostemon helferi.
The noodles were loving it, and spent most of their time snaking about in the thick undergrowth.
I even got this blurry picture of the very illusive Long Serpent. He is a beautiful fish, his sides shine a bright silvery golden color when the light hits it.
Shortly after this photo was taken he spotted me and darted off as usual 😅
Unfortunately sometimes when things are looking the most grown in and beautiful is also the time when trimming needs to be done. Im not gonna lie I really preferred how this corner looked before the trim, but the Blyxa was smushed up right against the glass, and the growth was beginning to choke itself out and rotting. The noodles were immensely offended when I started pulling out plants, and were shouting something about habitat destruction and violation of rights as they were darting for cover in other (obviously subpar) parts of the tank. I expect they will be calling for my resignation as town mayor any day now.
Tonina is a nice plant. Very nice. I didnt know what to expect when I got this one for the first time, the stems look like they might be very delicate, but they are actually quite wooden and strong. This plant is super well behaved, it grows straight up without any funny business. I never quite understood why people were talking about "well behaved" plants, or plants that are not very well behaved. But I sure understand now. Its so much easier to keep Tonina under control than say, Ludwigia palustris "Super Red", which branches and leans and goes every which way, shading its neighbors and generally being rowdy.
A lot of the time I find myself needing to trim a group of plants not because they are that overgrown, but rather because they are growing the wrong way or leaning and making some other plant unhappy. "Super Red" is a repeat offender and im thinking about getting rid of it entirely.
Earlier this week I got a package of plants from a very kind hobbyist. Ive been wanting Rotala rotundifolia "Blood Red SG" for a while, and Im fairly confident that this is the first time this plant is even in the country.
Unfortunately they had a pretty bad time in transit, and much of the plantmass was wilted.
But, in the very tips I saw some growth that looked like it might still have life left in it.
Hoping for a small miracle I carefully cleaned off the wilted leaves. Many of the stems were still firm, which is a good sign.
I put the mostly bare stems in my tank and hoped for the best. My shrimp went right to work and cleaned off any remaining dead tissue.
Its a little bit early to call it yet, but I think they may make it 😍
I love Ludwigia sp. Marilia, have I mentioned it before? Maybe a couple of times 😅
Bacopa caroliniana "Colorata" is starting to put on some color. Seems like a very uncomplicated plant so far.
Im not sure if ive even kept a Bacopa species before, they havent really interested me. But the whole family seem to be unfussy plants.
The difference between the "Colorata" variety and regular caroliniana is how pink they get and how easily they will do so.
Colorata will get solid pink in higher light, while caroliniana mostly gets pink on the tops only.
A stem of Pantanal, these are still not stable long term in my tank. This one came from the windowsill not too long ago.
The ones that were doing well a month ago stunted really badly after the trim and replant and most of them didnt recover.
Im very glad to have a backup culture of this plant.
The stems of L. glandulosa I got turned huge in diameter as expected, and I decided to keep just one stem because of the limited space. I really need one more meter of tank length to comfortably keep all of these plants of mine.
This one is recently replanted here, lets see how it tolerates being kept relatively short as a midground plant
It was located in front of the Crypt spiralis Red before, but they were almost the same color and looked terrible next to each other. At least until glandulosa decides to be more purple it needed to be moved somewhere else.
Its voicing its general displeasure at my current regime by twisting of the leaves. I have observed this symptom in several plant species over the past month.
Im not going to try to diagnose what is causing this specifically, because im not convinced that this is a productive thing to attempt to do.
Instead im going to focus on fixing the things that I already know are not where they need to be with my tank.
CO2 levels have not been stable because I havent been able to stay on top of evaporation, and I also feel like the flow in the tank is not quite where it used to be.
For example the bottom spray bar definitely needs to receive its ahem annual cleaning
The intake strainers are also super nasty and havent been cleaned in a while which definitely could affect flow.
There is of course also the lingering micro issue, although we are closer to solving it.
Sometimes you just have to do one thing at a time, and thats ok.
I have been dividing the plant trimming into more moderate sessions as im catching back up with tank maintenance, and still have a few bits left to do like cleaning the plumbing and another water change.
The water is pink right now which may be showing up in a few of the pictures.
In the bottom right of the above pic you can spot the Ludwigia polycarpa. The yellow color is still developing, but im liking this species so far.
It leans a bit but doesnt seem fussy. This one has also been showing a bit of twisting leaves like the glandulosa.
Its super stout and bushy and makes a perfect midground plant. I originally had three growing but needed more space as usual, so cut down to one.
Hygrophila pinnatifida "Uttara Kannada" is going well, had its first trim last week, I brutally cut any runner going somewhere its not supposed to, and took out all the main vertical shoots, but it looks like I missed one.
So far this plant seems super easy, sure is a contrast to how much difficulty I had when trying it low tech. I did hear that invitro or even better tank grown specimens are easier to take into low tech than emersed stems, and the latter is what I tried back then. It might have given me better odds but it does seem like this one just really wanted the CO2.
Its gonna be "fun" attempting to keep this one localized to the relatively small bit of wood it is attached to.
On the spray bar you can see a smattering of green spot algae and tiny beginnings of some serious BBA.
I havent really struggled a lot with green spot algae before, not that I can recall anyway. Ill be monitoring the amount of green spot with interest as my tank develops and goes through various changes
Have a fair bit of BBA as well, im currently ignoring it as best I can, and have decided to focus on other more pressing matters. My hope is that the BBA will just happen to disappear as I solve some of the other problems.
In the picture are my three biggest varieties of Bucephalandra, top one is Pearl Grey, right middle is Silver Grey and bottom left is Dark Achilles / Kishii / Skeleton King / etc.
These three are really coming into their own despite the unsightly BBA. They dont seem to respond to trimming the same or grow quite like the smaller varieties.
I have decided to treat them as rosette plants in a way, and they seem to like this. Ive had three flowers from the Pearl Grey and one from the Silver Grey. I pinched the latest round off as I would rather have more leaves.
They are getting really massive and I think they will be just stunning once the BBA stops growing. I especially like the color of new leaves on the Dark Achilles, they have an orange bronze ish hue and they glitter/shine in metallic orange, yellow and green that is more or less impossible to capture on a still photo. It contrasts really beautifully with the steely grey of the mature leaves.
Various plant health pics:
As you can see amongst other things the Tonina is really not a great color, but I am grateful that it is at least surviving ok despite the issue.
So its an issue but its not a "whole house is on fire" kind of issue. This gives me a lot more time to work on it.
The Rotala macrandra Mini Type 4 is growing ok, it doesnt look good but its not dying. (Talk about low standards
)Color is not there, and theres a bit of curling and crumpling of the leaves.
This plant got the shortest straw and is not in a good position in the tank. Its way out on the right edge so flow is not super strong, light is not super strong and it has two really easy and happy neighbors in front of it that are super thick and block even more flow when they grow in. As if that wasnt enough it the creepy polysperma behind it keeps leaning over and breathing down its neck. A lot of the trimming I do of the Guyana and Polysperma is to keep them from infringing on the other plants around them. Guyana doesnt lean too badly it just gets super dense and branches a lot naturally.
RIP favorite kuhlii loach hangout corner. In the bottom left there is one bit of Ammannia pedicellata 'Golden' that decided to do a little bit of growing, but its probably not going to last.
I cleaned up some of the old growth around it and maybe the reshoots will do better. This plant seems to rely on its roots a lot which is why I havent disturbed the bushes in a while.
Kudos for not dying though, it looks absolutely hideous and it doesnt grow, but it stays around at least 😅 The yellow plant on the very bottom is a small bit of Cuba.
Cryptocoryne & friends corner is an absolute mess with tiny plants and BBA everywhere. Most of the big crypts are still sulking from being moved over here, a fair bit of general unhappiness. Interestingly I dont really seem to get melting plants in my tank, not even melting from these quite angry crypts. All the crypts I have have either already melted and regrown when they arrived at the pet store (all the Borneo ones), or came from invitro and didnt go through any melt. I have not purchased an emersed crypt yet, it would be interesting to see if that kind would also not melt.
I picked up around five small mystery crypts from my LFS a little while back, they were all from the tanks that contained the borneo crypts, but they were all way too small to tell which kinds they were.
Three of them have pulled ahead a little bit and seem to be growing a bit faster than the others. They are the type with the dark green slightly bullate leaf like the one in the center of the image.
I think the three dark green ones may be the kind that came in with the label "Sparta". It has been very difficult to find any information about this trade name, I have only managed to track down two or three pictures.
It seems to be a reddish brown to dark green crypt with long relatively slender leaves and strongly bullate leaf surface.
The fourth crypt looks like it might be another one of the "Queen Vandom" type, or perhaps the kind called "Nensies".
These names have also been very hard to find info about, but it seems like "Queen Vandom" and "Nensies" may be somewhat similar in appearance.
The fifth one is still too small to make any guesstimations.
The Bucephalandra BG2011/12 is doing fine and seems to be working overtime to pay back its debts to me. In addition to the main growing point its started three more along the older sections of the rhizome.
I have noticed sometimes the Buce seems to do this if you place the rhizome sideways or slightly upside down.
Im thinking of moving this one now so it gets more light and speeds up its growth a bit, but potentially having it covered in BBA makes me nervous. Then again there is BBA in this shaded corner also so I might as well.
Hymenasplenium obscurum has grown a nice big leaf and I hope the next one will be even bigger. I have plans to have a large group of this fern in the area in front of the Crypt spiralis Red, although it will need a root to sit on to prop it up a little.
I mentioned that I have a few new plants as well, they were ordered at the same time as the ones from the previous spree, but for various reasons took a little longer to arrive. They are;
Pteridophyta sp. "Niah"
Didymoglossum sp. "Buea Goliath" (I refuse to call this one Bolbitis sp. as that is just ridiculous)
Bucephalandra Moss
Fissidens sp. Miroshaki
Fissidens sp. Mallorca
+ no less than three gifts;
Crepidomanes sp. Vietnam II
Crystal Moss
Fissidens Nagasaki (I passed this one on to another moss collector as I already have quite a lot of Fissidens)
The following pictures are absolutely terrible and I refuse to retake them 😁
Both these Crepidomanes need better homes soon(TM)
Im very interested to see how some of these new "ferns" grow, like do they cling to the wood like Bolbitis and Java ferns do?
An interesting thing about Bolbitis heteroclita "Cuspidata" (that regular Bolbitis heudelotii cannot do), is that it can grow new plantlets from old fronds.
You may be able to spot some of the plantlets, especially the one on the very right.
The bit of much anticipated Fissidens sp. Miroshaki has been spread out on its own coconut, while the Fissidens sp Mallorca is bunking with Crepidomanes Vietnam II and Bucephalandra Moss.
Fissidens Miroshaki & Mallorca and Bucephalandra Moss & Crystal Moss seem like two pairs that seem quite similar. I know there is a subtle difference between Buce and Crystal moss, the former is slightly bigger and the latter is a bit more crinkly somehow. The Miroshaki and Mallorca I have found to be hard to tell apart in pictures, so I will be very interested to see how they both develop in my tank. Unless they turn out very distinct there is a high likelihood that I will pick my favorite kind from each pair and sell off the other.
The Anubias Mini Coin is doing well too, im letting it grow out a bit more. I want the pieces that I snip off to be big enough to be replanted on the coconut, so it needs a bit more time.
Vesicularia sp. "Tortoise" has grown out of the mesh, it really needs a trim if I want it to grow more branched and bushy. Its on my to-do list 😇
Im thinking of putting Weeping Moss back in the tank so I can compare the two. Maybe another piece to put on the glass 😘
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I tried shoving it back in the dosing container and leaving it for future-Hufsa to deal with some other time (my favorite way to deal with problems), but it no longer fit inside the hole so I had to make a new bit of pipe 
