Bunked off work to visit a colleague who has some pondweed going free. Came back with a little plastic bag of the stuff. Insert your own gags here. #Elodea #Science

I’ve done my aquarium water change and big maintenance like I mentioned earlier, I was at it for around two and a half hours or thereabouts and now my poor old back is killing me 😕 but it’s done now and I’m happy with it, so I’m sat here on the sofa, as comfortable as I can get with a cup of tea and a couple of painkillers 😁

Okay lets get to it then, the first job I needed to do was trim all of my stem plants, they were pretty long, some running along the top of the water, so I trimmed them well down but kept the cuttings for replanting to thicken the back planting up a bit. I stored them temporarily under wet tissue to stop them from drying out.

Next job was to drain however much aquarium water I was going to change, first being sure to turn off the heater and the filters, I drained 3 big full buckets (they were damn heavy), that was around two thirds of the tank water and is a good big water change.

I wanted to boost the nutrient levels for my aquarium plants so I broke up a bunch of API Root Tabs and pushed them down into the sand spread around the tank to give the plant roots something to feed on. Then onto planting, first I gathered my various saved stem plant cuttings into bunches and placed them along the back in the appropriate plant groups, I also had some new plants to put in the tank, I had bought some Vallisneria Torta which was planted around one of the back corners, and some Elodea Densa which I planted in a gap in my wood hardscape. I had also bought four different types of Bucephalandra which is an epiphyte which means they shouldn’t be planted in the substrata as their rhizome would rot so they are usually glued or tied to wood or rocks, I glued mine onto the wood in various positions.

I wanted to tidy the front central area of my aquarium substrata to make it look a bit nicer so I put some fresh sand over the top of that area and it looked much nicer. I had some black beard algae growing on some of my plants and had read that liquid CO2 supplement was good for getting rid of algae so while the water was down low I sprayed them with my liquid CO2, hopefully that will get rid of the algae.

I had left some botanical’s soaking in hot water overnight to use in the tank so next I placed them were I wanted them to give a natural look and so various of the occupants can feed on them and hide in them, aquarium botanical’s consists of various leaves, cones and pods found in nature, or in this case bought from specialist dealers.

Now it was time to fill the tank back up, I filled the buckets up one at a time with hot and cold water mixed to approximate aquarium temperature, the buckets of water were also dosed with API Stress Coat+ which conditions the tap water making it safe for the fish and Shrimp Mineral GH/KH+ for healthy shrimp, the first bucket also contained the tannin water left over from soaking the botanical’s. As with emptying the tank refilling it took three big full buckets (and yes once again they were damn heavy). The water was poured back into the tank carefully over a sheet of bubble wrap so as not to cause too much disturbance.

Once the water was topped back up fully I turned the heater and the filters back on and added beneficial bacteria in the form of API Quick Start to help compensate for the influx of new water.

While I was ongoing with all of this and for a short while afterwards I observed my aquarium to check how things are getting on in my little aquatic world and I’m happy to say things seem to be getting on alright, oh and one big thing to mention regarding my former little wriggler that I saw occasionally wriggling about on the bottom of the tank, well I saw it quite clearly a few times and it isn’t a little wriggler anymore, it’s a fully formed perfect tiny catfish swimming around freely 😁🙏 So I know for a fact I have at least one little baby catfish, I only saw one, or maybe only one at a time, there may be more than one but I haven’t yet seen more than one at a time, but hey if my catfish have bred once they may well do it again and I might get more 👍

Anyway that’s all for now, I’ll just rest and look after my poor old wrecked back and ask you to please Be Well, Be Safe, Be Happy 😊💕🙏

https://passivevoyeur.uk/2023/11/23/big-aquarium-maintenance/

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