Just got home from the most amazing short holiday and am absolutely dead, soz for not responding to all of you guys and your amazing posts!!! I swam with sea turtles 😱 it was just magical.
I was in St Bart's for my friends wedding (they very generously helped us get there!), and was so moved by the beauty of the nature. This hobby had made me appreciate the tiny beautiful things in nature all around us even more - all the kinds of macroalgae floating about, mangrove propules, small branches colonised by coral, even just the few tropical leaves from the trees around the beaches floating in the sea struck me as so beautiful, when before it would just be random crap in the sea lol. If I had a macro algae tank I could drop tropical leaves in there too! 😂 Maybe that's for another post of this botanicals thread. If I could've I would've brought back a whole suitcase of fabulous tropical dead leaves!!! Sadly apparently it's not allowed but I've got some new plants to try to source in the UK now. At one point I found a fan palm with a leaf-span of 2 METERS and started to imagine a crazy giant blackwater with one of those in, would be so good!!
As I am brain dead all I'm doing rn is watching the big tank and it's so lovely and relaxing and beautiful.... A bit overgrown but the fish are very active all over. I know there are often reports that pygmy cories become shy and lethargic but with my group of 25 (ish) they are super active, and right now swimming all over the tank in a school and feeding in the sand, they've been at it all day. I thought this group behaviour might stop after a while but I've had them for a few months and it hasn't stopped - they really make the tank tbh, them and the apistos are stars.
Of course the co2 I installed the day before my trip is empty 🙃 but the fish are all fine HALLELUJAH. First time away since getting tanks!! Was so busy I think the main connection must've not been tight enough. The plants look good too and are really overgrown on top, and no new algae yet so must have run out recently. Will probs do a blackout just in case.
Last week before my trip I bought some new young wild cardinals and they've really relaxed while I was away and are now all over chasing eachother, it was definitely a good choice to add some more - even though they're tiny they have a surprisingly big personality! The big cardinals are out A LOT more too, hopefully they feel a bit more young again lol. I like this model of waiting a good while between adding any new fish and first adding more of what I already have - good sized schools of fish makes such a remarkable difference to behaviour these tetras are completely different! I
got them from the Fish Barn, which is a FANTASTIC shop!! I've never seen such clean tanks and healthy fish, and lots of special unusual species. Also ordered some very unusual echinodorus from them to arrive this week 😀 I'm going full echinodorus in the back.
The tank is almost fully stocked but I've requested from them some threadfins in a good mix of sexes, which is apparently hard to source, so we'll see if/when that happens.
Also another big improvement - I have been getting slow pale plant growth for a while. Then I lost my micro salts, which turned out to be very lucky!
@Courtneybst came to the rescue and gave me some of his, as well as an extra teaspoon of DTPA iron as he said it helped his plant growth in hard water. It's worked fantastically for me!!! The buces are suddenly all growing, melt is gone and rubbish pale leaves seem gone too. In about 3 weeks things are looking just much perkier. We are definitely on the road to proper lusciousness soon.
Ok brain dump over, will get back to ask this fabulous botanical discussion tomorrow and start the new thread on it!!
🙂