58 Gal Tank - Plants

I used mostly fast growing plants donated by fellow aquatic gardeners to jump-start the tank about a year ago. Some of the plants never survived - for almost a year I used no fertilization at all and only half of the lights available. Some plants were pulled out along with green hair algae. Some plants did well though! Here is an overall view of the tank today with some photo equipment I use to take these pictures.

Rotala rotundifolia
Dwarf rotala absolutely took over the tank. Every week when I remove hair algae I trim or pull out a bunch of these stem plants. Its top is of nice red color. The bottom leaves which have less access to light are smaller and of dark green color. Here is rotala in the right part of the photo.

Hygrophila difformis
At first I mistook Water Wisteria for Ceratopteris cornuta/Ceratopteris thalictroides/Water Sprite
Water Wisteria leaves have beautiful fresh green color and intricate shape. Fast growing. Very fast becomes bushy. Needs frequent trimming. I never managed to make it look good. Here is water wisteria taking over foreground.

Hygrophila polysperma
After about almost a year I discovered a single surviving plant of Dwarf Hygrophila. Now it took off and grows as fast as rotala or water sprite. Here hydrophila is in the middle with water wisteria in the background and lower foreground. I understand this plant is considered to be a weed and can not be sold in US.

Eleocharis parvula
Dwarf Hairgrass (E. parvula or is it E. acicularis?) did survive for almost a year in the shadow of rotala. Now I pay more attention to not pull it out when I remove hair algae. It is a problem though, because dwarf hairgrass is a hair algae magnet.

Anubias barteri
I purchased this Giant Anubias plant a couple of years ago at a local swap meet. Since then it grew steadily and I made at least 3 cuts to propagate it to other tanks. It is always covered in some sort of algae but grows and even flowers just fine. Here it is in the middle, pearling and flowering in all of its glory.


Echinodorus amazonicus
I bought 9 stalks of this Amazon Sword on eBay from aquaticmagic. All of them are growing!

Fertilization
For the last month I am running fertilization using PPS-Pro approach. I like its simplicity - daily dosing of two solutions with no need for water changes. Overall fertilization helped plant growth and suppressed growth of hair algae. What hair algae does grow though has much thicker hair so it is harder to remove.