January Update

Things have slowed down a bit now that I have all of my tanks up and running. I've been doing faithful weekly partial water changes on every tank, and every tank has levels where they should be. Each tank gets Flourish Comp and Flourish Iron on as regular a basis as I can remember. The CO2 I mixed up a few weeks ago is still bubbling in the 29 and in the 6.6. Also, I moved 3 of the snails to the 6.6 to combat the proliferation of algae in there, and they've been doing a good job. I'm now starting to notice algae in the 29.

Anyway, here's what's going on.

The red tiger lotus in the 55 is growing. That's one of the baby plants I got from the guy in NY. Of the four bulbs I got from Thailand, 2 have flowered.

This is a panoramic photo of the 55. It didn't turn out well. The wisteria is pretty jungly, and I've been trying to thin it out and let the cabomba take over.

The Ohio River driftwood, with growing riccia fluitans and surrounding rotala rotundifolia.

The angelfish have been eating my Amazon Sword.

In terms of fish, the Black Skirts have been moved downstairs to the 29 to join their tiny little schoolmates. They've settled in well.

The two angelfish were in the 55g. There's more room up there for an angelfish. As time passed, they were spending more and more time together. I didn't see any evidence of formal pairing off, but they were getting chummy. Which was fine, until I found one of my ($30) rams dying. I didn't see any bites on the ram's body. It could have been anything. However, with that ram's death, the other two rams began bickering. I think I've got two males. And at the same time, the marbled angel started bickering with at least one of the rams. There was some chasing. I was so upset that I lost my ram that I decided to separate the angels before aggression began to fire up and somebody else died. Namely, a $30 ram. I felt kind of bad about separating the angelfish, but I don't think they care. I'll have to keep an eye on Mr. Marbles down in the 29 so he doesn't get too large. If I have to, I'll move him back up.

So, the stock in the 55g:
4 clowns
1 burmese loach
4 congo tetras
2 balloon rams
3 guppies
1 angelfish

And in the 29g:
6 corydoras
8 cardinal tetras
5 black skirts
1 angelfish