7 entries · Page 1 of 1
nothing to report really, just sat and watched the corys sift through the substrate for a while tonight. shrimp were out grazing on the buce, endlers doing their usual chasing each other around the sword. tank's basically at the point where i don't need to do much besides top off and feed, which feels strange after all the fiddling early on.
getting a decent film of algae on the glass and some on the anubias leaves and honestly it's annoying me more than it should. cut back the photoperiod a bit and upped the WC frequency to see if that helps. ramshorns are having a great time with it at least, so someone's happy. just frustrating when everything else looked like it was finally settling in.
did a WC and a light trim on the rotala today and somehow ended up with more mess on the floor than in the bucket. water sloshed over the rim twice, then i dropped a handful of trimmings halfway between the tank and the trash. dosed ferts after and cleaned up my own puddle for longer than the actual maintenance took.
added the chili rasboras today, just a small group to start. tank feels completely different with them in there, darting around the vals and hiding near the buce whenever i walk past. it's such a small change on paper but the whole thing feels alive now instead of just a nice looking box of plants. going to let them settle before adding anything else.
no fish yet so i've just been ghost feeding a pinch of flake every couple days to keep something for the bacteria to eat. dosed some bottled bacteria again on day one and again this week just to speed things along. water's crystal clear now which almost makes me nervous, half expecting an ammonia spike to sneak up on me. plants look tiny still, mostly just holding on rather than growing, but no melt so i'll take it.
water's in, filter's running. cloudy as expected.
spent the afternoon stacking and restacking the same three rocks. went with a layout that leaves a clear path through the middle so it doesn't feel like one solid wall of stone. wanted something that would still look right once the vals and sword fill out behind it. no water in yet, just dry substrate and wood right now, deciding if i like it or if i'm going to rip it apart tomorrow.