New Beginning

So in the end I decided to remove my whole plant all together. Even though it had its new little leaf which looked like it was doing fine, I don't think it would have survived for much longer. To be totally honest I was also sick of faffing around with this plant and I finally found a new plant at a pet shop, so I replaced it!  

This was my original Amazon Sword Plant that we got given at the beginning of our  assignment.
As you can see the new leaf was doing OK, but that was all. This is the plant after removing it from  the tank .

Because I was removing the old plant and adding the new one, I decided to do a 100% water change. I also wanted to add the Zeolites to the tank, so I wanted to start off fresh.


I first took Blue out the tank and left him to swim around in a little glass (I try do my water changes reasonably fast). After taking out the plant I added a bit of fresh water and rubbed down the insides of the tank. I did this leaving the pebbles and sand substrate in the jar. I then rinsed the jar completely clean by adding fresh water to the top of the jar and pouring all the mucky water out. I repeated this procedure at least 4 to 5 times until the water was reasonably clear when I filled the jar. I poured most of the water out, leaving just enough to cover all the sand substrate and pebbles. I added the new little plant making sure to completely cover all the roots. This plant is a different species from the Amazon Sword Plant. It has many little leaves on each stalk. I counted 4 stalks and 43 leaves on all stalks in total!
The pet shop didn't know the name of the plant. I just researched it and it's either a Cherry Hedge (Amaranthaceae) or Asteraceae (Gymnocoronis). This is a bit disappointing because if it's the Cherry Hedge, it's sold as an aquatic plant but I read that it's actually a terrestrial plant and, if lucky, will only live about 4 months underwater!! So I'm probably going to have problems again. Hopefully its the Asteraceae, then I shouldn't have problems, but I'm sure I'll see soon enough which plant it actually is. For now, which ever plant it is, it looks good underwater :)


Carrying on with the water change process...
I rinsed the Zeolites and the cloth and halved the amount in the cloth bag. The stones went darker when I wet them, but the half that I took out went back to their normal colour when they dried. I put the cloth bag with the Zeolites in it in the tank together with the plant.
After all this I refilled the tank to the top with water and added the dechlorinating drops (water conditioner). I stirred the water until the whole tank was evenly tinted blue and added Blue back into his tank with the new environment. It took him a bit of time to get used to all the new things in his tank, especially because his tank was so empty for a while, but now he likes to swim in the new plant.

The rinsed wet Zeolites after I halved the stones. The ones on the plate I have dried and will use them to see the colour difference in 3 weeks time.

This is the new plant and the Zeolites in the tank just before I filled it. The water looks a little murky. It cleared soon after I filled the tank and added the water conditioner. I put the bottle of the water conditioner into the picture so that people can see what one of the conditioning brands look like.

And this is the tank just after I added Blue. Here he is still busy exploring his new environment.