Hi everyone here's another update on my five gallon nano tank which holds my pea puffers. I recently went to the fish store to purchase two new plants as my baby tears was visibly decaying in the tank. This was mostly my fault because I just recently became more interested in live plants in my tank and did not understand the proper nutrients I have to consistently add into the tank for healthy plants.
I chose two easy plants to maintain which are also asthetically pleasing in my opinion. The first is a java fern which is a nice plant that takes up a good amount of space in width. It is a lower plant that spreads out which makes the tank look a bit more filled out. I also purchased another species of anubias. This is a regular anubias and I placed the anubias nana petite right next to this plant in the tank.
Below is a picture of the baby tears that was clearly not doing well because I did not add any nutrients for the plant to grow.
Overall, I think it was best to remove the baby tears and add two more plants rather than continue to allow the plant to decay and cause the water parameters to be unsafe. From the picture you can tell there are still pieces of the baby tears floating about the white sand. Unfortunately I could not syphon all of the debris in one water change so hopefully in the next water change I will be able to clean up all of the sand.
From the few minutes after I added in the plants it looks like the puffers are enjoying the area more and are very curious of the new setup.
Additionally, here is the finalized look of the tank with both species of anubias next to each other. I really like the solid green color of these plants and are very healthy at the moment. I hope I can continue to maintain the same quality from these plants as they grow.
To make sure these plants reach their best potential, I purchased root tabs to provide them with adequate nutrients.
I broke up one tab and placed bits of the tab into the sand near the roots of each plant. The requirement is to add a new tab every month, however, if I find that the plants are not thriving before the month is over, I will go ahead and add a tab. I will just need to monitor the tank.
So this is just an update on the new plants I added to the nano tank! In my next post I will discuss what I did with the baby tears after I took it out of the puffer tank as well as my first time checking my water parameters. I will link that post to this one. Stay tuned and feel free to leave a comment or question below! Thanks.
Update: Part 2 of this post can be found here (@kajalpats/plants-snails-and-ph-part-2)