# Before and After



## tekknoschtev (Feb 24, 2005)

I haven't posted here in a _long_ time, however, I've been putting off posting, and I figure that I wont start posting until I post so here goes:

My sister has a tank in her room and has for a while. A bit ago, I sort of took it over in an effort to make it better health and aesthetically, and well things are going great. She's still in high school, I'm in college and given summer classes and work, I only get to see my tanks once every other week at best. Well, it had been 3-4 weeks since I was home last, and today I came home to this:










The layer of duckweed on the top had grown enough such that I very easilly could have covered my brother's 55 gal tank, my turtles 75gal tank, and her tank again, completely - fortunately its going to a pond that I help look over so that'll work out. The hornwort had grown, in three weeks, from a strand about 2" long to what you see in the picture. Anyways, all of this was choking the plants below from light (although they all had grown considerably, especially the zosterfolia) and I went cleaning and wound up with this:










The tank filled back up, duckweed removed to the best of my ability, hornwort trimmed back down, and here we have it. That crypt lutea (walkeri, whatever) I bought from a LFS started in a 1.5" pot and now, well, theres no chance it'd fit back into that pot. The root system is huge, and the leaves are half as tall as the 55. The amazon sword that was in my 10 gal tank prior to entering this tank has exploded in growth over the past year and is almost growing out of the water. The javamoss wall is filling in nicely and well, everything seems to be doing well.

Just thought I'd show off a bit.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Nice tank! Plants look very lush in both pics! But I think it was good that you trimmed when your did


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## tekknoschtev (Feb 24, 2005)

Zapins said:


> Nice tank! Plants look very lush in both pics! But I think it was good that you trimmed when your did


Thanks. In reality, there was no trimming, just removal of hornwort and duckweed (there was _that_ much that it just looked like I trimmed. I'm going to be trimming things soon though). I'm really digging the growth the system has been seeing - I'm afraid to see how quickly it'd grow if I actually did anything beyond water changes with it though


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