Plants

Of course the most interesting part of an aquarium is the plants. Well, maybe not the most interesting (it's hard to beat the entertainment potential of fry), but they are certainly key components. But given all the other drama, I really haven't managed to give the plants the attention I'd like to.

The most interesting stuff is the Echinodorus - I have two species of it (ok, actually I am not totally certain that the smaller one is an Echinodorus, but it has a similar growth form. Pretty cool plants - really are emergents, of course, but they seem to be happy enough submerged. Since they grow all the way up the the water surface they seem to fulfil the role of floating plants. What amazed me was the way the platies (and snails) demolished one of the near-dead leaves. Once they had a starting point they stripped the leaf and stem down to fibres in a day. The platies are pretty dedicated herbivores when they set their mind to it, but the plants seem to be doing ok overall.