To get my tank to recover, I am replanting the tank in phases. Starting about 4 weeks ago with Elatine triandra which is fondly known as Ah Pek Plant (APP) in Singapore. Once planted, the Elatine immediately flourished. Elatine is a very fast-growing plant and is a nutrient hog. It grows very fast with lots of fertilisers (including CO2) and light. At the same time, once fertilisers are lacking it melts very fast.
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Bouncing Back
It has been a while since the last update. The arowana is growing well, but the plants can do better. Frankly, the main reason for the lack of updates is the less than ideal condition of the plants and algae situation.
I’ve been getting an alga that forms a film on the leaves and hardscape, then dies and turns brown and hard. Also getting the green dust algae (GDA) on my glass. No one apparently has found a good solution for GDA besides lots of Bristlenose Plecos (BN). WIth my aggro arowana, more algae eaters is not really an option. Would really love to put in 10 more BN, or 2 platoons of Otos.
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Bolbitis heudelotii – Part 2
In my previous post, I wrote about my hopes for this plant in my tank. It has not disappointed and grown back lushly. Now I’m wondering where to reposition it in the future for the best effect. Perhaps I should tie some on the exposed wood over the open sand areas.
Bolbitis heudelotii
Bolbitis heudelotii has failed to survive in my tanks over and over again. And this time, the start wasn’t encouraging… the mature plant had come from a fellow hobbyist’s chilled tank and within a week in my un-chilled tank, all the existing leaves started to die off.
Nevertheless, the rhizomes were still green and they could possibly spring back once it adjusts to my tank conditions.
Lo and behold, 3 weeks later, some of the surviving unopened fronds have put out new leaves! I took out the plant to trim shorter the leftover stalks that I had trimmed earlier and was rewarded with new fronds budding last week.
The photo shows the plant 2 weeks ago with new leaves. Hope the plant keeps this up.
The current tank is cooled with two 120mm PC case fans running 24/7, blowing over the water surface. Temperatures range from mid-27°c to high-28°c. For fertilisation details, see the top menu for the link to tank details.