It's been a little over a month since I posted my initial project on the set-up of my 22 litre nano aquarium and as promised I'm doing an update.
So what's changed?
Well the ottos from petsathome all died :( and after visiting the shop again that tank is now under quarantine.. sigh. Thankfully it effected nothing else in my tank but did leave me with just 3 phantom tetras with shrimp and snails. So I decided to get 3 neon tetras and a dwarf bristlenose pleco. The tank growth is going extremely well however I have just done one of the most extreme pruning sessions on the tank so far.
Additionally the tank is booming with new life as the Assassin snails laid eggs all over and now we are seeing baby assassin snails. Also the shrimp have been busy as the tank now has a ton of baby shrimp in various white and red colours showing that one white male cherry shrimp has fathered a group of them.
Starting off with a video slideshow of how the tank progressed in growth through out January. I trimmed the tank down a little each week as you'll see it get shorter and begin growing outwards more each time.
Here you can see Assassin snails unique eggs. It begins with the assassin snail sticking to each other for often over a day without moving before the female goes and lays eggs around the area. The eggs are very square in shape and have a white dot at the centre.
This is the last photo taken before the first real aggressive trimming shown below. You can see how the Bacopa plant has essentially took over the tank which I really dislike. Not only that but because its growing out up top much more the stems are all bare of any foliage and mostly lots of roots which has taken far too much tank space away from the fish.
You can also see how amazingly well the Christmas moss has grown out and is leading up the tree. I purposely left it a few weeks to trim to see how the tetras would react swimming between it or avoiding it like something in the way. Turns out they will occasionally swim in the moss but mostly swimming around and above it so it is something I will be keeping an eye on.
This is the tank as it is right now. I have removed the Bacopa plant from the back right of the tank which has left it looking bare. However after trimming the centre plant I replanted a large trimming in the Bacopas place. It will take a while for it too root and begin filling the space back up but because it has larger more dispersed foliage it allows the fish to better swimming around it. The back left of the tank has grown out enough that you do not see the water pump outlet into the tank as well as dispersing the air bubbles more efficiently.
All the Christmas moss has been trimmed down and all the trimmings bundled up and tied together with cotton thread and then placed at the back of the tank so it can begin growing forwards. The Christmas moss around the tree has been pinned down even more by wrapping thread around the branch (which took some doing!), it will get an even better footing on the wood and progress to grow thicker than before.
Granted the tank now looks a bit naked, however alike all the times prior it will come back even better than the time before. So I will do another update in the future to show the result of this extreme type of pruning.
Part 2 - 22 litre Nano Aquarium tank design - all natural
