# How to easily remove plants from a NPT



## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

Thought you guys might get a kick out of this.

Here's what was an established 29 gallon NPT in July 2008.









It's been set up for several years and was packed solid with sag subulata. I had to pull the sag invading the foreground out off and on to actually be able to see the fish... Well on a wild hair, I picked up a couple of blue crayfish at a local aquarium club auction and since I really didn't have anywhere else to put them, I added the hidey places and put them in the 29 NPT. Added a powerhead in there with a sponge prefilter and the venturi hooked to an airpump as supposedly crawdads need extra airation.










They've been busy little beavers since then... pulling up the sag and excavating. So it's ranged from a mud puddle to just hazy off and on as they do their thing. I get a glimpse of them from time to time. I did a good vacuuming and a couple of partial water changes last weekend and when it cleared up enough this week to see all the way to the back, I was amazed to see only two sag plants still rooted! LOL Since I didn't have time to deal with it, I just threw a bunch of najas grass in to help the duckweed keep the water happy until I could deal with it this weekend.

Here's what it looked like this morning when I turned on the lights to feed the critters. They're back at it again! Believe it or not there are also Endlers and a clown pleco (I can't catch) in there who appear to be doing fine.










The moral. don't put crawdads in a NPT unless you want them to make it a mud puddle and devoid of all rooted plants.

Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing cuz getting either sag or e tenellus out of a tank after it's established isn't the easiest thing to do. I pulled every bit of tenellus I could find out of my 5 gallon NPT at work here while back and it's busily working at taking over that tank again.

My dilemma is that I'd kinda like to replant this tank and I really wanna be able to watch the crawdads. Those two things aren't compatable with each other in the same tank. So I guess some tank shuffeling is in order this weekend. LOL


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## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

lol. thanks for sharing.


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## cs_gardener (Apr 28, 2006)

That's exactly what my shrimp tank looked like after I removed all the dwarf sag! Fortunately, I'd already gotten most of the shrimp out before I started pulling it or I never would have found them. The last few I only got after I drained 95+% of the water. 

What's sad is it was such a healthy, attractive tank before the crawdads started remodeling. It's hard to believe that everyone is still healthy with such murky water, but I've noticed the same thing when I have temporary mud puddles. I guess it bothers us more than it does them.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

When I was growing up, we used to go camping down on Red River (Tx/OK border) and it was quite similar actually, just redder. LOL

I'm really not that sad about the tank really. sag is a weed in my tanks. and it was the only thing growing in that neglected tank.

I got it drained tonite and there's only one crayfish left. I'd been told they wouldn't live together and I guess they were right.
Actually managed to catch the little clown pleco and move him to another tank. He went in there several years ago as a little one and I thought he was dead till recently cuz I never saw him. I'm glad he survived the crayfish!

I picked what I hope was the last 2 remaining sag subulata plants out and now i gotta figure out how I'm going to scape it. and what I'm going to do with the crawdad who's temporarily in a rubbermaid tub.

Think a red rubin sword would get too huge for that tank?
I have kleiner bars too but they seems like they'd get too large for that tank.

I may do the red rubin in the center toward the back with Echinodorus parviflorus v Tropica as foreground plants since I can't seem to manage to find any decent foreground plants that do well under 2 wpg cept for e tenellus that ends up getting too tall.









any idea what this sword is?








I'm thinking it's Echinodorus 'Rosé'?


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## musrusticus (Aug 21, 2008)

Wow. Those are beautiful cichlids!


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