oops! Drip Drip

We came home today and the water level had dropped by 5 cms... hrm!!! what happened?

It looks like the replanting of the tank had disturbed enough stuff to block the filter and had one nozzle was squirting very enthusiastically drenching the wall and the carpet behind the tank.

Emergency mode! First drain the tank by 60L then move the tank out, bring out the towels and dry the damp carpet. At the same time we decided to paint the back of the tank black.

A dark backdrop is ideal for Amazon tank and gives the little tetras a nice background to show off their colours.

We rejigged the filter so now the water flowed under the separator rather than over. Which will help when the squirter will happen again

New plants

We've updated the tank with new plants and more gravel. The tank looks much better, I got Steph to rip out the hydrophilia, which was looking rather tatty and we added wisteria (Steph called it Endives - looks like the salad leaf) and we also moved all the tall plants to the back and added more gravel in, giving it a bit more uniform look.

The rummy nose tetras are having fun ducking and weaving amongst the tall plants, occasionally they venture out into open water to freak out and dive back in.

The fat lady sang...

And I found her dead this evening after work.

we found one of the rosy barbs picking at her corpse. Tropical fish are much more cannibalistic than their goldfish counterparts.