End Of Week #11
UV KitThe UV was running for a full 28 hours (Sunday 28th through Monday 29th April) and as the water was nicely cleared, I added a segment timer and cut the regime down to 15 minutes per hour. This to preserve the lifetime of the bulb as much as possible. Hopefully my 4,000 hours recommended will take me into March 2014 at the current regime. The question remains as to whether switching the unit on and off on a regular basis has a detrimental effect on the bulb... jury is out on that.
Aquascaping (aka Fiddling with stuff)This is a dangerously addictive thing to do, but I am going to be strong.
I have been looking more closely at other plant growth (now that I can actually see through the water properly makes a huge difference). So, I've decided to do a little bit of rearranging as some of the plants on the right are being swamped and are not growing too quickly at all. So, this evening I'm starting a bit of 'scaping. Now that growth patterns seem to be settled I can now see which plants will do better in front, middle or to the rear.
My end game (for want of a better description) is to remove the gravel completely in preference for just sand. I was hoping that the gravel and sand borders would "blend", but to be honest it just looks scruffy. Although it'll mean shifting stuff around, I'm hoping to be able to take cuttings of the smaller plants (Repens for example) to enable a larger physical area to be covered. I'll be starting on the left third because there's actually less in there to start with. The fly-away Quadricostatus will be brought under control too.
AdditionsI've managed to acquire two pots of
Hygrophila polysperma 'Rosanervig' (Rosae Australis) (
link), which have been sitting in my isolation tank since last weekend. It is quite tall already, some 11 inches, so will make a great background. Apparently very easy to propagate, which will help me build up a nice bush.
Another acquisition is a large 4.9Kg lump of Ocean Rock, and 6 palm sized rounded stones of a pale pink colour. The Ocean Rock has some interesting holes and cavities into which will be placed some sort of plant-life.
This weeks photo's attached.