So, you guys know we're going to be re-scaping the Uaru aquarium, and you also know that whenever I scape a new tank, I only need three things: one, I need a saw, two, I need a flashlight, and three, of course, I need a pot to boil water in. This all makes sense, right?
The saw, obviously, to cut up some wood. This isn't the wood, but you guys know the plant scape. I need to saw it down, to make sure it actually fits in the aquarium. Again, this isn't the wood, and that's where the flashlight comes in.
I have of course, once again, decided to scape another tank in the middle of the night. I'm gonna need my flashlight and comb through all this wood and try to figure out which one it was. But I know the number one question you guys are asking yourselves, and that's — "What is that pot for?"
The pot, of course, I'm gonna go boil some water in the house, to remove most of the [unintelligible] from some Indian almond leaves, also known as Katapa leaves.
These are going to add a little bit of leaf litter to the aquarium, make it look more natural. We've done this before of course, but it's also going to make the water a little more acidic, lower the PH, and of course, release some tannans to the water, which in turn, makes everything seem a little bit more natural. I'm not actively looking to lower my PH or make the water acidic. I'm also not looking to add tannans, but it does look really great as leaf litter along the bottom, but with the Uaru, these don't last long.
So, although this scape that we have right now is absolutely phenomenal, and I fell in love with it, I think we jumped the gun with creating a, or finding and discovering that beautiful piece of wood, and just wanting to put it into use, but at the end of the day, it's just too big of a piece of wood, for the fish. Not for the tank. Obviously, it flows really well in here, and clearly fits inside of it, but the fish are having a hard time, or we are having a hard time actually seeing them. I think also, if we give them a lot more swimming space, they'll of course, have a large growth spurt. These guys are are only half grown and I definitely want to make sure we grow them out to their full potential. Not sure if we're going to continue to use the ferns, we're gonna see what happens. We're going to continue to use these rocks, I love these rocks in this tank, and with some leaf litter, it will look phenomenal as well. The plan here is just to simply take this out, take the ferns out, I have to drain this tank almost all the way just to get the brace off in order to get this piece of wood out, and then of course, figure out how we're going to get those, wood like this, to look like branches coming into the water, yet we don't want too many — or do we? We're just gonna have to play it by ear.
So, first things first. Obviously, I'm going to have to drain the tank down, fish are going to stay in it. This will be the least stressful that we can do, is drain the tank. Don't touch the fish. Raise the wood up out of it, get the ferns out, and go from there.
