Football Tradition

It is becoming somewhat of a habit, but I performed approximately 20% water changes on both tanks this afternoon. I tend to give myself a pat on the back for a job well done, regardless, but today was especially nice. Just as the lady who works at Alamo Aquatics suggested, the water change in the planted tank (apparently) significantly aided in the plants' respiration. You can see all the bubbles that have formed on the needle leaves of the foxtail, and several of the other plants showed significant bubbling that had been missing for some time now.

While I'm at it, it's probably a good time to step back and take a look at the tank again, since I haven't put up a picture of the whole thing since the beginning. Now granted, I have added a bunch of plants since then, but compaing the pictures, you can really see the increase of height and girth on the majority of them.

The veggie clip has been holding cucumber slices on and off recently, but they seem to be mostly snail food. The intented consumers, the otos, certainly haven't minded it very much. Speaking of which, I got some algae wafers, trying to go a different angle, but the corys seemed far more interested than the otos. I'm guessing my fear they don't have enough algae to eat is overblown, and I'll try not to worry about it again until I fail to see any algae in the tank (ha!).

Speaking of pests, I was disappointed that kuhlis wouldn't eat snails, as they are definitely overruning certain areas. For instance, as they crawl over the foxtail, they often leave enough slime to clump needles together and seemingly adversely affect the plant. I guess I'll have to let them find a happy equilibrium with the tank, until I work up the intestinal fortitude to squish them to death, one by one. They don't appear to be directly hurting the plants, by eating them or something, though.