68L HighTech Style Planted

[xxBarneyxx]

Added 3 female dwarf gourami today... half wishing I hadn't.

The male went from chilled and peaceful to full on ******** instantly. He has gone from literally taking bites out of them to just chasing them off but keeping a very close eye on it. If it doesn't calm down I have a couple of smaller tanks I can setup and stick the male in there for a week or two and try again.

Might have to section off part of the surface to stop the floating plants getting out of hand. On monday almost the entire surface was covered. I removed 2/3rds of it and now the entire surface is almost covered again.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

So been awhile since I update. Its basically just in "maintenance mode" now.

I ended up rehoming the male Gourami. After initially being super aggressive he then went into a sulk and hid at the back of the tank all the time. The females are doing great though and getting big fast. I might in the future have another go at introducing a male, hopefully introducing the male after the females will make things go better.

We also have a couple of dozen different Neocaridina shrimp. Bought a bunch of "culls" for cheap because they have bad colouring and then got a bunch of yellows and reds. The second batch got stuck in the post and were 3 days late. Surprisingly all seemed to survive though. Mostly invisible in the tank unless you get up real close but I know how quickly they can multiply. Talking of multiplying I now have ramshorn snails everywhere. I like it but definitely not to everyones taste. My MIL keeps telling me to get a couple of assassin snails to "take care of the problem".

Plant wise lighting is still an issue. Plants are all generally going well but have not been able to get any kind of carpeting plant to survive and the red plants are surviving but not really getting the kind of growth I would like.

To make this matter worse the floating plants and stem plants that are directly below the light grow so in such a small tank that they quickly overtake the foreground plants.

I was away over Christmas and just before I left I completely skimmed out all the floating plants I could see and trimmed all the stem plants back to halfway down the tank. Couple of weeks later come home to the top of the tank covered in floating plants and the background plants becoming foreground plants

Cut out over half a carrier bag full of plants and its looking a little more tamed now. Crypts are growing WAY faster than I was expecting so might have to move things about a bit at some point.

Before trimming, the photo looks a LOT brighter than it was in real life.

After trimming:

If anyone in South East Kent (UK) ever wants some plant trimmings this is what I pull out every couple of weeks.