Well, it's been literally figuratively forever since I posted an aquarium update, so I guess it's time.

About a month after I last posted about it, the last shrimp died. Hard to say why since he outlasted all of the others by a month when they all died within a few days of each other. Also about a month ago one of the neon tetras died, which means I'm now down to just the three neon tetras and the guppy.

However, it's not all bad news, since to some extent the tank has started to turn itself around:

In the time since the last photo, most of the plants I put into the tank grew algae, which I've read means that the plants aren't growing, since when they do they release stuff that inhibits algae growth. Later on, some of the plants broke free from the soil, floated to the top, and grew a huge mass of algae which I simply left in place. Months later the mass receded on its own. It's still there but now much smaller than it was. Many of the other plants simply died and completely decomposed.

The plants here, at the bottom left of the tank, grew algae almost immediately, and then most of them died and decomposed. I didn't bother to remove any of them as it wasn't apparent that they were dead until they were kind of no longer there. In the last month, what plants remained have grown a lot such that the tank now has more plant matter in it than it started with.

At some point the two snails in the tank reproduced, filling the tank with hundreds of snails. These grew for a while, then at some unknown time, the majority of them died off, but the older larger ones survived. So the tank now has hundreds of small snail shells. Since then the snails have reproduced again and there's now a second generation of small snails.