Though I shut down the bowl we had going at home for the shrimp and baby guppy, I’m determined to make the one on my desk at my job work. It’s a 2 gallon traditional-shaped fish bowl that I’ve had for at least 25 years if not longer. I don’t even remember if I ever kept fish in it before.

I had set it up in mid-November with plants and a light. I switched out the light for the one I had on the bowl at home because it was a bit brighter. It also has a mini filter that serves as a bubbler. The bowl at home had no filter – and I’ll never do “no tech” bowls again!

Unfortunately, the following week after I set up this bowl I went on vacation. A coworker kept the light burning each day for me, but when I returned most of the plants looked transparent and as if they were melting, except for the Anubias plant on the driftwood. They seem to be pretty hardy.  I noticed a new plant was doing the same thing in the 5 gallon at home, so it was time to do some research.

The transparent or “melting” leaves are a result of lack of nutrients, so this required some reading to find out how to fix this. I bought a liquid fertilizer called API Leaf Zone that had decent reviews on Amazon, but the manager at one of my favorite tropical fish stores suggested a fertilizer called Flourish. I’m treating my tank at home with Leaf Zone, and decided to treat the bowl at work with Flourish. We’ll see how they do.

I’m a bit impatient though and threw out all of the crappy-looking plants in the bowl. I thought they were goners. Nope! Could have kept them and just cut back the leaves and they would have probably grown back. Sigh…  I did keep the plants at home that were looking iffy and transferred them to another tank so that I could keep an eye on them.

Instead, I ordered some more plants for the bowl at work. I added another Anubias plant, some Java fern which is supposed to be very hardy, and mini bolbitis which is a type of fern. I did a partial water change and treated the bowl with a few drops of the Flourish fertilizer. We’ll see what happens. I plan to add fish to it on Wednesday of this week. I’ll share more about those in a later post.