# Maintaining Emersed Scapes



## Aqua360 (7 Sep 2021)

Has anyone sustained long-term emersed scapes, similar to setting up a dry start then just keeping it like that? 

I'd quite like to do it for one of my tanks, as it's an iwagumi and quite honestly would look better sans equipment, but I'm guessing there could be the following problems long-term:

1) pests? If so, what ones are likely to crop up?
2) trimming, will carpet plants choke themselves with growth, in which case how best to remove cuttings effectively?

I've had one small set-up like this before, but I re-scaped it before long


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## Garuf (7 Sep 2021)

This is my old Vampire Crab setup which I ran for over a year, no pests but I had to thin regularly, the trick was too fill the tank up and trim it back hard letting it all float then drain the water level back down slowly. I moved onto a more paludarium type set up in the end once I learned more about the needs of the crabs.


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## Tyko_N (8 Sep 2021)

Aqua360 said:


> 1) pests? If so, what ones are likely to crop up?


I'm running a paludarium with mainly terrestrial plants, so not exactly the same thing, but here is my experience: I have only had one outbreak of aphids in the last five years, and this was easily solved by buying some parasitic wasps which cleared everything up in a couple of weeks. If you inspect the plants thoroughly you will probably be able to avoid most pests except maybe aphids (which have a flying stage) and fungus gnats (more of a nuisance unless you have a huge population), although be careful if you add anything from outside, a snail might be easy to remove but can do a huge amount of damage over a few nights. However if you have the option to flood everything I imagine this would get rid of pretty much any bugs in one or two days. Also, healthy plants are pretty tough so you have some time to deal with any pests before you start losing any plants, as long as you discover them relatively early.


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## Aqua360 (8 Sep 2021)

Thanks for responses, it looks like sporadic trim and flood would help to remove pests and remove cuttings!


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