My 240l Planted Tank, Again.

Loved the first one - your tank looks so professional and relaxing to watch... I might just show it to my fish to show them how they ought to behave. Hmmm - I do wonder if the extra swimming space calms them down... (good excuse for a tank upgrade for me ).

Second one is also interesting, partly because I've never kept loaches. It looks as though he's kicking up sand at the very end to mark his territory. 

Kuhilis are great. Such lovely faces and adorable antics. 

@fcmf  my tank isn't as calm today. I think that one of the fivebands might be gravid. There is a lot of chasing going on - mostly males chasing females (i can't tell if it's the same female)

I realised that I'd spent 2 hours just sat infront of the tank watching the fish! Not terribly productive. 

So, inspired by the exploits of @Littlefish and @Matt, I bought some extra bits of wood for my tank. They ahve spent a week soaking and I've spent the last two evenings meddling with my aquascaping. I'm not entirely sure you can see many changes to the aquascape and I hope that changes when the bolbitus and java fern grow a bit more.

If I've attached them successfully the 3 photos are:
Before
After usual pruning
After rearranging

The middle of the tank also got a bit of a revamp too, though unfortunately that's not as easy to see because the crypts in front are a bit too tall and the same colour!

A large u-shaped bit of wood went in (I bought it to be an arch but found it was more stable as an U) with another new wood arch (again bought to be the otber way up!  )
 I have attached bolbitus and java fern to both these pieces of wood so hopefully when they grow in, the middle of the tank will have more variation than just crypts and rotala. I also moved the bit of wood that previously had all the java fern on from the back where it was hidden because it's not grown quite as tall as I'd hoped, to between the new wood and the crypts. Hopefully this brings some green in amongst the dark olive / brown crypts.

I've not done a particularly good job of spreading out the sand as I'm fairly confident the kuhlis will have rearranged it by tomorrow anyway!

And annoyingly, I forgot to scrub the from of the glass!

The rotala grows well in my tank. Stopping it from blocking the water flow can be quite challenging. So this time instead of just shortening the stems, I thinned it as well, taking out the extra long stems all together.

I did think about taking that crypt out. A few reasons I didn't.

Mainly because it is huge and I'm pretty sure the root system is huge (based on its babies that I took out from the front of the tank) and taking it out would actually be pretty disruptive to the substrate!

Also, it got quite late last night and I was losing the plot taking out so many plants, that I thought I should pause in my destruction!

And then I noticed that it actually lines up quite nicely with the side of the arch, so I've planted another couple, hopefully much smaller and actually green, crypts behind it in an attempt to create a kind of tunnel leading to the arch.

But, yes, if that doesn't work, it'll have to come out!

 

Another video of my fish. Be warned, it is actually 5 minutes long and nothing particularly spectacular happens, it's just my fish doing their thing after feeding. But there is an appearance from every species in the tank, including one of the kuhlis.

https://youtu.be/8_V8ieFg6hw

Wow - the photos and that video are fantastic. What a wonderful and enviable habitat you have for your lovely fish - no wonder they look so content pootling around as they go about their business in their own underwater world.

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