Once upon a time at the riverbank

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30th August 2010 - part 1

A mega update this month. Unfortunately due to my camera breaking and my new camera using xD cards I am still waiting for an adaptor so the pictures here have been taken on a Samsung camera phone.

However whilst messing about getting used to it's 'quirks' I took lots of pictures and I liked quite a few of them. Therefore this.update will be split into 3 parts. This is part 1 and will focus on some major changes I have made to the aquascape.

I have felt for a while that I needed to sort out the midground in the centre and left of the aquascape. Due to the Crypts growing where they wanted to over the last 18 months It had become a little unbalanced and after the foreground was just a mass of stems. I also thinned out the needle fern to let some light down to these areas. Finally two of the anubias have been 'shortened' and the cuttings moved elsewhere.

So no messing about. Out came all the Crypts from this rear corner. 124 in all. I would estimate this to be circa £300 worth of plants.

Once they were out of the tank I laid them out in sizes and then started to replant from the rear left corner with the largest to the midground with the smaller ones.

This was immediately followed by a 50% water change to dilute anything that came out of the 3 year old substrate from this major disturbance. This is the first water change in nearly a year. The process can be seen below.

30th August 2010 - part 2

Part 2 will focus on the livestock within the tank. With the tank thinned out somewhat I can now count the fish properly. I found 3 dried out Rasboras behind the tank. They must have been there a fair while. This tallies with my count of 12.

Of the 10 Cory fry that I put in the tank the runt of the 'litter' died last month. These are a bit harder to count as they are black and also some tend to 'rest' in dark areas whilst others are buzzing around the tank and then swap places. I managed to count 7 of them but 1 is in a poor state with tatty finnage. I don't think this one will survive. The large mother is still there and looking as majestic as always. She really is a stunning fish and pretty big to boot.

The cherry shrimp colony continues to dominate this tank. There is no way of counting these as there are quite literally hundreds. I give some away but each month there are 50+ in my filter alone when I go to clean it. I don't have the heart to let them go into the sink so they go back into the tank.

The MTS are a little more under control. The shrimp see to that. The shrimp are so quick to anything edible that the MTS tend not to find enough food and therefore their colony stays at a noticeable but manageable level.













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