50G – Overgrown with Blyxa

My 50G aquarium is now an overgrown jungle of Blyxa japonica and Blyxa aubertii. There’s a little bit of Ludwigia arcuata and Limnophila sp. ‘Vietnam’ mixed in there as well with Narrow-leaf Java Fern carving out a place too.

On one hand, I’m really happy with the tremendous growth, as most of the tank is algae free minus the Eheim spraybar and a few older leaves. Also, the bristlenosed plecos that I have in here are continuing to churn out more fry than I know what to do with. The Apistogramma have a pretty good idea of what to do with them, however, but I still seem to have all females, and no breeding there.

On the other hand, the huge mass of plant growth has completely consumed the aquascape. Below you can see what the aquarium looked like shortly after planting. All of that same driftwood is still in the tank, but you wouldn’t know it, would you?

So, now I need to decide whether to simply hack back the plant growth to a more reasonable state or to rescape it altogether. I imagine that this will largely depend on how many plants I pickup at the GWAPA meeting next weekend!