Tank updatessssss
A little while ago I ran out of sinking algae wafers, and so I simply had to go to the LFS to buy them. Certainly it was JUST A COINCIDENCE that I gave that particular LFS my apisto babies, and JUST A COINCIDENCE that I happened to walk past their tank and amongst the 6 left spied a cute lil male making trouble for the rest of them. Who could resist? Did I not raise these fish? Are they not -
sort of - my children? **** it, they are and I took that boy home. Young Master Apisto is very sweet and Ms Apisto has welcomed him happily, she's already breeding with him lol. He's much much smaller than Mr Daffodil, and not nearly as colourful but I'm interested to see if and how that changes now he lives with me again.

Second story:
I've given up on stem plants completely **** it, and now have 8 echinodorus in my tank because I truly never know when to stop. But seriously, there are too many beautiful ones, and still so many on my list, I should've been born German 😢 I'm hoping one or two will get large enough to have leaves growing out of the top, and I'm raising my light soon just in case. The list is currently:
E. Palaefolius, E. Cordifolius red, E. Red flame, E. Yellow sun, E. Hadi red pearl, E. Rose, E. Red sword, E. Rubra. I'm screwed when they get bigger but OH WELL LOL, I'll just give away any that don't look completely fabulous. I've added about 20 root tabs to help them along, v intrigued by root tabs and how they change the growth, because in my tank the ephiphytes are popping now, but the planted plants have struggled (and frankly I just sort of ignored the back for ages because of it). Now the plants in general are not only not dying but growing well, I realised it's time to really take care of the whole tank. And I think it'll look awesome to have this giant leaves and stems in the back in all different colours, with the more delicate plants on the wood.
I also bought a realllllllly nice
Echinodorus cordifolius var. marble queen, but that's going to grow emergently in the 45L downstairs so I guess it doesn't count. My dad has planted a huge number of variagated plants in our garden of all different types and it looks really cool, so it's nice that the tank we share also has something variagated too. I bought the
marble queen from Pro Shrimp (great plants and interesting echinodorus sold there), and got the
yellow sun and
red flame from Fish Barn (probs my favourite shop now, amazing fish AND plants). These pics I've nabbed from the internet show then at their best, though I think yellow sun is more simply golden submersed, it's hard to find mroe info online about them.
Third story:
This week I cleaned the filters and lily pipes, omg they were FILTHY. The mini waterchange I did after was pure cold rainwater, and it caused a flurry of pygmy corydora breeding all over the tank which was super awesome. They lay tiny lil pearls all over, one at a time. Of course... all the eggs got hoovered up by my greedy apistos and sparkling gouramis, but it's the thought that counts. My tank is still not very heavily planted at all in the back and corners, so hopefully in a few months when the echinodorus grow in then some eggs and babies can make it.
I've also noticed the smaller wild cardinals are "fighting" with eachother more, they look like tiny jewelled daggers have a knife fight. It's very fabulous, I really like them. When I bought the extra ones I wondered if I'd made a mistake and should've got some smaller schools of other fish instead but I think having a big group of one kind does look awesome and their behaviour is much more interesting than I previously gave tetras credit for.

Fourth story:
After seeing the beautiful aquarium of
@Ullalaaqua, and her fabulous DIY backlight, I realised that I have some spare LEDs for the kitchen cabinets and rigged them up. It's a subtle difference but I really really like it, I can see the fish in the back better, and the fish don't just automatically hide in the back any more, but in shady areas all over the tank. It really makes such a lovely difference, and the wood stands out even better now. Hooray, DIY! BIG THANKS to my childhood self for painting my room blue all those years ago. Just omg, it's so much easier to take niec pics now
😱😭😍

Ok.. ok... enough stories, this is just to say I'm now free enough to finally talk BOTANICALLLLSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. So as soon as I post this I'm gonna go back to those posts and reply to them like they deserve and work out how to get this ball rolling. I know it's a bit late this year, but I still think there are some great plants that can be collected from year-round, and it'd be great to get a list of good potential species to try next year and work out how to organise it all well in a forum post and all that jazz.