Somehow, without me realizing it, my 40G tank has turned into more of a farm tank, than an aquascape. There’s a little bit of everything in this tank right now, most of it doing surprisingly well!

This is part of the problem when you have a tank with ADA aquasoil in it. You know that just about anything will grow in it! Therefore, when I see a plant I’m interested in trying, but don’t have room for in my normal aquascapes, where does it go? Well, of course, in the 40G, where the amazonia will keep it alive until I do find room for it! The only problem I ever have in this tank is occasional blue-green algae, when I don’t dose enough nitrates. As you can imagine, all of these stem plants suck up some nutrients! I’m currently only dosing SeaChem products in this tank because they work well, and don’t cost that much to maintain a 40G tank. I pretty much follow their recommended dosing chart as far as frequency of dosing goes, but I dose more than they recommend of everything. To the right is the pogostemon stellatus from Jeff in GWAPA (bigstick120 online) that’s waiting for the right aquascape to go in. The time will come soon I hope!

So what’s in here? I’ve got the usual plants, such as limnophilia aromatica, baby tears, didiplis diandra, stargrass, blyxa japonica, blyxa albertii, rotala magenta, and rotala pusilla.

A few more exotic ones like ludwigia cuba, ludwigia pantanal cuba, cyperus helferii, and rotala macrandra var. ‘green.’ Don’t forget pogostemon stellatus, and pogostemon stellatus ‘broad leaf.’

Not to mention a few ground-cover plants that are not getting near the light they require! Then, I have a few plants that I’ve collected locally, including creeping jenny, ludwigia palustrus, and an eleocharis species.

With all of these plants, I rarely see my beautiful apistogramma panduro fish that I love so much. Fortunately, the dwarf neon rainbowfish juveniles that I picked up at the catfish convention seem very much at home in this tank. They’re always racing around the tank, from end to end, darting in-between plants and rocks as they go. I think they like it in there!

At the last GWAPA meeting, I decided to buy another plant I had somewhere hadn’t managed to keep, even though it’s been in the hobby for a few years — blyxa aubertii. I’ve always had incredibly good luck keeping blyxa japonica, so I decided to give it’s slightly more difficult cousin as try.

When I got home from the meeting, I didn’t have time to properly plant the blyxa in my 40G, so I just threw it in the tank, letting it float around. Well, I guess you can say that I forgot about it for 4-5 days. Yesterday morning, I open the tank’s lid to feed the fish, and to my surprise, the blyxa aubertii had two flower stalks coming up and out of the floating plant! The plant I got was a very mature, healthy plant, so I guess all it needed was a little bit of light, close to the surface. In any case, it was a nice surprise!

I obtained a breeding pair of apistogramma panduro from another apistogramma aficionado in the Capital Cichlid Association, a local cichlid club. These beautiful fish have a 40G breeder tank to themselves, with a few rummynose tetra as dither fish. Shortly after introducing them to the tank, they colored up, and started protecting eggs.

After the eggs hatched, and the fry became free swimming, I fed the fry infusoria, and had plenty of java moss for them to hide from the tetra.

Inevitably, a few of the fry were picked off, but I have a decent number of them left, as adults, now. I’ve kept a few different types of apistos, and I think this particular species is one of the most beautiful ones available. The pictures don’t do this fish justice, but the deep purple body, and iridescent orange fins are incredible. The females look pretty much like most female apistos, except them have the same red border on their tail fin.

They seem to be a relatively peaceful apistogramma species, expressing far less aggression than other apistogrmma to the dither fish, even when spawning. Actually, they seem to spook fairly easily, hiding when I first approach the tank.

This weekend, I decided to make the 30-45 minute trip out to Aquarium Center, in Randalstown, MD. A lot of folks have a lot of different feelings about this store, but as far as plant selection goes, this is one of the better stores in my area. From GWAPA, I’m so used to seeing the latest and greatest plants that enter the hobby, thanks to a few folks in the club who actively trade and acquire plants from all over the world. This time, I decided to finally try out some of the plants that have been around for awhile, but have never graced my tank’s aquascapes.

The main plant I wanted to try was didiplis diandra. Over the years I’ve seen a number of nice aquascapes using this plant. It’s got a nice greenish, bronze color, but the knock on it is it that the stems can be quite delicate, causing the bottoms to rot and the tops float up. I’m looking forward to see how this grows in my 40G in aquasoil.

Another plant that I’ve never truly tried in ernest is baby tears. This is a small leaved plant that can be grown and trimmed into a bush-like form. I did buy this plant once before, but I didn’t have the proper equipment or trimming techniques to really get this growing how I wanted it to.

 Finally, the last plant I got was rotala wallichii. I’ve never been able to maintain any of these thread leaved plants over the long haul. Invariably, the stems end up branched and ugly, and the leafs themselves end up with algae or other crap in them. This time, I’ve promised myself that I’ll take a little bit better care of it. We’ll see how long that lasts!

 

I realize that I haven’t posted any updated pictures of the 40G since I posted about the hardscape. Well, I took all of that blyxa japonica out of the 75G, and inserted it here. I probably ought to remove some of it from here, but I imagine a few clumps will remain in the final scape. I’m in the process of growing out enough ludwigia cuba, p. stellata, rotala macrandra ‘green,’ and ludwigia aromatica to fill out the back of the tank. For now, they’re just long stems waiting to be trimmed, and replanted.

Well, I finally got fed up with lots of not-so-dwarf hairgrass, full of brush algae, that ended up not staying rooted in the substrate. So, I pretty much yanked everything out of the tank. I had neglected this tank for about 2 months, allowing a lotus plant to nearly cover the entire surface. I had hoped that if I let it go long enough, I would finally got a beautiful lotus flower. It figures that the day I pull out that lotus, I see its first flower stalk shooting up. Of course, I only realized this after I ripped out the foot long root system, uprooting the entire left side of the tank. So much for patience — I’ll try that next time.

So, anyways, I’m working with a very limited set of slate rock that’s leftover from redoing my 75G. One of these days, I need to get back down to an excellent slate collection site by the side of the road in northern Virginia. Below is what I’ve come up with thus far for the hardscape. I want lots of caves, as this tank houses several apistogramma panduro. Please ignore the horrible derth of flora right now. I need to make a serious visit to my LFS (and a few GWAPA member’s tank) to find some new and interesting plants to throw in here. I’m open to any plant suggestions, particularly for the foreground.