Sunday Maintenance

I did another 15% water change on the 30 gallon. The baby cories are active; I'm hoping I can move them to the 10 gallon before too long.


While I was snooping around, the zodiac loach came out to check things out. When I flinched, he darted underneath the driftwood by the amazon sword that I had though I blocked. In fact, the smaller driftwood I used had moved, so I replaced it once I saw he had moved to his normal cave.

Speaking of the amazon sword, I recently posted a swap proposal on The Planted Tank Swap n Shop forum. It will pain me greatly to get rid of it, but it's just outgrown the tank, and I'd like to have some light reaching the substrate so I can play around with the foreground. On that note, I asked for HC (Hemianthus callitrichoides) and riccia in return. We'll see if there are any takers. Then I'll have to figure out how to ship it...

I noticed for the first time that that my MTS are dual colored. The tips are red, and the bases are the normal brown. It leaves me wondering if that is a particular species feature, or if the water quality changed and had an effect.

While I was rummaging around, I pulled up a few pieces of slate that I had used to make that cave way back when. The idea being that since it was being used a whole lot anyway, I'd free up the space for the cories to congregate, free of worry about being attack by the zodiac loach (ideally). They were all too happy to start rooting around in all of the substrate I kicked up in the process, but they seem to be unfomfortable there when I am standing in the kitchen. Also, it seems I displaced (but hopefully didn't injure) a kuhlii loach that swam around frantically as I went to work.