I'm a plastic tat tank sort of person and I now find myself in charge of the second tank in my house which was set up by someone else with proper plants etc., and I'm not sure of the best way to look after it. It's well established and the inhabitants seem really healthy but it looks a bit of a mess and I'm wondering if there's much I should do to it, or whether it's just annoying me because it's not very neat and I should leave it alone!
It's around a 40l tank I think, and the inhabitants are 5 mollys, 1 platy, 2 ottocinclus, 1, possibly 2 small shrimp and 2 small assassin snails. There's a heater and filter obviously, and inside the filter it's the main filter media ceramic(?) whatnots that it came with, and instead of sponges like I have in my plastic tat tank, there are two big chunks of stuff that is a bit more like cotton wool, the word for which temporarily escapes me, but which gets really super-minging and seems to need a very frequent squeeze out. Parameters seem fine and water changes are regular. Here's a picture of the full tank.
As you can see, although there used to be several plants in there, only one of them seemed to be successful and the previous keeper took most of the failed ones out. I don't know what this one is called but it seems to grow like stink and all the throngs are now super-long so instead of just growing up to the top, they've been allowed to grow all sideways and upside down and are all intertwined. If I did cut them back, It wouldn't leave a lot of greenery there as the fish have all nibbled off most of the lower leaves. I'm not sure if this would be a good thing to do to encourage bushier regrowth or would just kill them off. Or if I did decide to just get rid of them and try some new plants, do I pull them out of the soil/gravel layer (seems messy) or snip them off (possible unwanted regrowth)?
Here's a picture of one of the chunks of wood.
This used to have Christmas Moss on it, and that got a bit out of hand and got on the previous keeper's nerves, so they yanked it out. Since then this stuff has been growing all over it, which I hate the look of, but I've no idea what it is and if I should just leave it where it is. Ideally I'd like to get rid of it and try something new on the wood, but actually maintain it so it doesn't get out of hand.
So far I've just been concerned with keeping my fish alive, and solving parameter problems etc. but now I'd like to work on something for fun and satisfaction, so I'm up for hearing any advice for dealing with what's in there already, or ideas for what I could do. I feel like it would be much nicer to have a variety of plants in there but at the moment I'm not sure what to do!
Thanks in advance!
