As I mentioned in last week’s post, I’ve been “resetting” the two ten gallon tanks now that my white clouds have all been moved into their new home. I have the red neon rainbows and sparkling gouramis in one of the tanks and it looks fantastic. That left just 4 tiny emerald rasboras all by themselves in the other tank.

I spent last weekend removing the gravel from their tank and replacing it with Fluval Stratum. I’ve had a lot of success with this substrate in my other tanks, and I didn’t like the gravel in this tank so I decided to switch it out. With the black background, the dark substrate really gave the tank a whole new look.

I had a few new plants leftover from the last Buce Plant shipment that needed a place. This tank also had a lot of moss that I had never properly planted, so I tied it to the two pieces of driftwood that I planned to keep in the tank. I added some large river stones and a small piece of Manzanita wood to complete the look. I admit I didn’t like it at first, but it’s been growing on me.

The 4 little emerald rasboras have been so shy, but they are so cute. I wish now I’d just put them in the larger tank with the minnows though.

I thought some buddies might help so I bought a few more, along with some celestial danios, last week to go in the tank with them. Nope. So far, they’ve all still been very shy, and they stay hidden a lot. This really surprised me with the danios. I’ve kept zebra danios in the past and they were always much more active.

So much for wanting to get Scarlet Badis for this tank instead! Even though all of these fish are very small, I don’t want to overcrowd it.

There are currently no snails and no corys in this tank. I’ll eventually add snails to help with clean up, but I’ll probably avoid corys. I put quite a few corys in the big tank with the minnows and they dug up a lot of the plants. I was not happy about that! But it’s much easier for that to happen with this substrate than with the gravel.

I’ve nicknamed this tank “Mississippi” after the river. Yeah, I know these plants and fish are not native to the region, but I am and I like that name for it.