Water World

I have a few new additions to my aqaurium. Last week I went out and purchased some glossostigma. Glosso is a very nice small plant, made popular by Takeshi Amano, and used as foreground planting (see picturre at left), where it can carpet the bottom. Presumably it is fairly difficult to keep (needs a lot of light, CO2, and soft water). I provide enough light, occasionally supplement with CO2 and Flourish, but don't have a clue whether the water is soft or hard. We'll see what happens.

Also I have gradually lost many of the fish I had when I first established my 20 gallon long aquarium last year and have had to get new ones. One fish that I have always liked is the cardinal tetra and I got nine of them so they can school together. These brightly neoned blue and red striped fish are really pleasing to observe. One day I'll get the proper equipment for taking better photographs, but for now the picture of one cardinal tetra (right) is the best I can get. They dart around very quickly.

Here is what I'm especially excited about. I got my first invertebrates! Four ghost shrimp to be exact. I have been ogling various invertebrates in my favorite tropical fish stores but have been wary about investing in them thinking that they might get eaten by the fish. The ghost shrimp I got were very inexpensive, so I have a chance to see how they progress around some quite larger fish. I have one dwarf gourami and two plecos that, although reported to be good community fish, are big enough to do real damage to the shrimp should they have a notion to do so. So far so good and it is really very interesting to watch the shrimp forage along the bottom and swim around. The ghost shrimp pictured at right has a bunch of eggs under her abdomen and soon I should have many baby shrimp.