Jared Andrews

I had hoped to wait several months before trimming the plants at all but two factors made me decide to do it today:

• I originally placed two floating rings around the driftwood, I didn't fully understand how pennywort grew and I wanted there to be be space for it to climb up the wood. This turned out to not really be a problem. The pennywort has no issue fighting its way thru the duckweed. On the other hand, it was almost impossible to quickly clean out the rings around the wood when duckweed inevitably grew in it. I wanted these two rings gone.
• The pennywort was really taking over the tank.

My two lily bulbs had also grown aggressively and looked like they needed a trim. They were send up lily pads, but some were getting stuck against the front of the tank and rotting away.

In some good news, the monte carlo, appears to be carpeting. So it was important not to mess that up during this trim.

I began by pulling out as much duckweed and pennywort as possible. At some point I also removed 30% of the water. It has been a while since I have done a water change so this seemed appropriate.

After this I trimmed a few plants and moved some plants around. I also wrapped some pennywort up and around the wood. I'm not sure if this will work or if it will die, but I have plenty of this stuff so it's an experiment I'm willing to run.