hi I'm Irene with girl Talks Fish if you've been on this channel before you're probably pretty
shocked to see how the tank looks uh this was not on purpose so let me give you the two year update
now i used to have a horribly black thumb couldn't grow anything for the life of me so for this 20
gallon high aquarium i decided to buy every single beginner plant on the aquarium co-op website
and then focus on doing whatever it took to balance it which is why i decided to call it the
back to basics planted tank i started off with these plants which you can see labeled on screen
and then i moved in a bunch of fish from my previous 20 gallon setup which included
sound wave the elderly betta fish hillstream loaches a peacock gudgeon otocinclus catifsh, etc
i also bought several amano shrimp and a school of dwarf chain loaches
i wanted as many algae eaters and clean up crew members as possible three months later
let's just say i was in the middle of a major battle against algae so there was a lot of uh
plant casualties in the process i ended up replacing them with even more beginner plants like
water sprite pogostemon stellatus octopus and a dwarf aquarium lily since this is a community tank
a lot of fish from my 10 gallon breeding projects ended up getting dumped here so first off was my
dalmatian balloon molly juveniles which were great because i discovered that a lot of lie bearers are
actually excellent algae eaters look at them go this is also when i added the orphan dwarf platy
Mio whose mom died in quarantine do you guys remember baby Mio so cute check out the video
eventually Soundwave passed away of old age so i replaced him with a beautiful mustard gas betta
named Sonic as the new centerpiece of my community tank and then the dalmatian balloon
molly's got replaced with even more dwarf red coral platies because i don't know i
i find the red coloration to be really striking against all that greenery unfortunately something
about their color drove Sonic absolutely nuts so he got moved to his own five gallon bachelor pad
and he's been a complete drama llama ever since so i recorded his saga over here as for plants i
had finally balanced the tank so the plants were growing like crazy especially the aponogeton like
my tank is only 16 inches long and it grew 26 inches tall with my first ever aquarium flower
but yeah it was totally taking over the tank so i ended up giving it to my local fish store
with sonic out of the picture it was time for a new centerpiece no more bettas I'm gonna try
dwarf gouramis so if you saw my betta versus dwarf gourami video it's like a 50 50 chance
that the dark gourami will go ballistic on you i would say unicorn's a bit of a food bully but
otherwise definitely not the worst I've seen the dwarf chain loaches
got moved out and replaced with kuhli loaches because Gamer Boy said he really missed them
and this is also when i added my first mystery snail ever Sunstreaker and this is when i kind
of started neglecting this tank for a while my passion for the hobby was in a waning period
so i just let that Pogostemon stellatus grow out of control into a thick jungle
and then eventually it got out competed by an army of floating water sprite this is around the time i
added the pygmy corys at this point because i was done breeding them but then i noticed
that they were kind of getting out competed by food because of the zillions of breeding platies
so i ended up re-homing the live bearers i mean i kept one i think he's most likely one of Mio's
babies so his name is officially Neo he is just as ravenous as Unicron so in a way i think he's
helping Unicron lose weight because they chase each other around so much during meal times
now because this tank is balanced and densely planted i rarely have to do any water changes
which is why several weeks passed before i noticed the dreaded duckweed if you can believe it i have
never had to deal with duckweed before but i guess it hitchhiked on one of the new plants i bought it
infiltrated all of that beautiful floating water sprite i was completely distraught like i couldn't
even speak to my family all the way to church but you know me i am Team "Kill It With Fire" when it
comes to pest snails or anything invasive so i went with the scorched earth policy none of this
uh careful netting or using a turkey baster to remove it i basically got rid of all that
beautiful water sprite and then like watch the tank like a hawk for any more hidden assailants
it's been about a month since the original attack and i haven't seen any other signs of duckweed the
pogostemon stellatus is now making a comeback because it actually has access to light but
then all the low-light plants are starting to get coated with algae despite the lower lighting so my
next steps are to get more floating plants to act as shade possibly some red root floaters despite
this recent tragedy I'm actually kind of glad i was forced to remove this jungle i mean Mr. Gamer
he thinks it looks a little better because he can actually see the fish and plants in there and i
kind of agree with him as well I've started taking more interest in the tank the only problem is
there are eight cardinal tetras in there which Mr. Gamer picked to replace the platies and they're
pretty shy so if you have any suggestions let me know down in the comments because i would love
to see more of them also thank you to Jeff from Texas Fish Room it was really great meeting you
at Aquashella - Dallas and thank you so much for the shirt as well as thank you to Carlos for the
anubius nana pinto this is uh one of the few times I've ever tried a tissue culture plant so we shall
see how it does all right you guys take time to enjoy aquariums and I'll see you in the next video