My soft water is indeed prolonging my "enjoyment" of watching this one develop
. I do have a couple more showas which are developing more quickly, and also a nice young shiro that in the last 5 months has gone from only submerged sumi to some lovely sumi coming up on it's sides. I think the biggest problem with this showa is he has a lot of beni that has sumi over it, making it appear muddy brown.