My first mistake was believing I could get HC to root and grow in Flourite. I heard and read many times that it needs a finer substrate, but I had to see for myself. Which I did. So after re-planting the HC that floated to the top dozens of times I got rid of all of it and replaced it with glosso. Here is the tank in late January:
The glosso had been planted for about a week; in another week I would need to trim it.
I was very happy with the way the Blyxa japonica had filled in:
The Java fern, just behind the Blyxa, was growing well, too. However the Brazilian pennywort had been a major disappointment. It had grown like crazy, and I had to trim it every week or so, but I hadn’t been able to get it to fill in the area and hide the filter intake tube. I planned to get rid of it as soon as I had a replacement. The other background plants were growing and spreading.
There was a little algae in the tank but not enough for me to worry about.
By mid-February the ludwigia was growing well, even if there was a little algae on its leaves:
I found a few pieces of a stem plant (some sort of Bacopa) I liked growing in my 55, and moved them to replace the pennywort; they had started to adapt and grow:
Maybe that filter intake will be hidden yet.
I hope that by the meeting at my house in August this will look OK.
