The Celestial Swamp - A voyage through a flooded forest fringe (Shallow Riparium)

[hitmanx]

I also sympathise with the choprae.

It's too bad... the Celestichthys choprae are actually very beautiful fish... if I didn't have an open top I would actually have a large shoal of them in the tank... when I had close to 20 of them in here it was awesome to watch them flit about together as their colours are so vivid... but they all jumped out except for the last 3... even now as I watch them they are exhibiting some very interesting sparring behaviour similar to the cpds... and they are the only fish in the tank that successfully had fry that matured in the sump...

Now if I could only get the cpds to breed...

Besides the ancistrus, otociclus and the amano shrimp, all of the fish hail from Burma (Myanmar) so it would be cool to continue that theme, but a big school of trigonostigma hengeli would certainly be more eye catching and colourful than the kubotai... but they are from Sumatra...

 

[hitmanx]

The overflow and sump!!

Somehow the Siamese Algae Eater got down into the sump! How is that possible?? He's already bigger than the c. Choprae...

The overflow is surrounded by #10 plastic canvas... unless they jump over that and then over the leaf gutter guard which is an inch taller...

Could they possibly be swimming into the return pipe and down into the pump and somehow not get chewed up??

I'm so confused...

 

[Edvet]

I think you underestimate their jumping capabilities

 

[hitmanx]

A gritty shot of the whole tank as I see it...

 

[Marc Davis]

A gritty shot of the whole tank as I see it...

Reaaly nice. Just needs dwarf sag. to carpet the front and job done

 

[hitmanx]

I've got 6 more Celestichthys margaritas, 22 more Microdevario kubotai waiting in a quarantine tank...

I'm gonna be adding some cryptocoryne wendtii 'green' and 'kompact' to the darker areas... its the only crypt species i haven't tried in the tank... and if I can get the front section carpeted with dwarf sag I will be happy...

 

[hitmanx]

The sump is finally cleaned...

I rinsed the poret filter for the first time since start up... it wasnt actually that bad although it is only 10ppi... I siphoned out the mulm in the sump with a python and replaced the water with remineralised RO...

I went fishing with my daughter and caught 12 Celestichthys erythromicron, 1 Microdevario kubotai, and the Siamese Algae Eater which has quadrupled in size since the last time he was in the display tank... I was actually expecting more to be down there...

This is the best I could do with this fast swimming fish...

I put everything back together but now the pump is making a cavitation noise and the display is quite cloudy... I put a 5 micron sock under the drain pipe and added some seachem prime just in case... I had to readjust the bean animal drain valve so I guess the filter was holding back some water...

I was going to finally replace the old pump with the new eheim compact+ 5000 I bought last year, but the hose size is different so I need new plumbing parts...

I will update the list of flora and fauna later... there's also a fry of unknown species in a breeder box in the sump now...

 

[hitmanx]

Fauna (Dec 2018)

1 Otocinclus affinis
1 BN ancistrus
1 Siamese Algae Eater
2 Brachydanio tinwini (Myanmar)
13 Celestichthys erythromycin (Myanmar)
14 Celestichthys margaritatus (Myanmar)
3 Celestichthys choprae (Myanmar)
8 Microdevario kubotai (Thailand/Myanmar)
4+ Amano shrimp

What seems strange is I have NEVER seen a dead body in the tank or sump... yes I've had jumpers but not enough to account for the losses since startup... unless my dogs are eating the bodies

A lot of the fish were pushing 3 years old so probably age related... but I've lost 7 kubotai since September and I've never seen a body... I do miss the brachydanio tinwini shoal... they were gorgeous but I can't find anymore...

Feeding has always been something I have worried about... common wisdom says don't feed to much but it's hard to know what too much is when you have a community tank with different types of fish and feeding habits...

I really don't think I feed enough and it will be interesting to see how the margaritatus and erythromicron fair with the new shoal of kubotai being out front eating all the food... given the age of the tank and non sterile conditions I'm sure there's all sorts of critters to supliment them but I don't know... I definately see them hunting something...

Waiting in quarantine:

6 Celestichthys margaritatus
18 Microdevario kubotai
6 Boraras brigittae

Not all the kubotai in quarantine were healthy when I got them and 4 have died by what seems like starvation with sunken bellies, odd swimming and death... no other signs of why... same thing happened with the brigittae as I started with 12 and down to 6 or 7... but they showed signs of fungus... the remaining seem healthy...

 

[tam]

I'm feeding ember tetra, scarlet badis (live food only), otos, corys, 1 amano and some cherry shrimp and I feed once a day. Three days a week daphnia with a few blood worm. About once a week a slice of courgette or twice a week a 1cm cube of rapashy for the algae eaters. Three days a mix of .5mm slow sinking pellets (never hit the bottom) and bug bites bottom feeders (too big for the mid water fish to eat whole). I usually miss 1 day in 10 just being busy. That way everyone gets something but not necessarily every day of the week and the live food is good as it will just hang out in the tank until it's eaten.

 

[hitmanx]

Apparently I jinxed it...

I had a kubotai jump out and dry up the other day and another one was chased out by the choprae right in front of me... it was spectacular! He made it several feet from the tank...

Luckily I was able to get him back in the tank with ease...

 

[hitmanx]

I moved 17 Microdevario kubotai and 5 rasboras brigittae into the riparium today... the front of the tank is again a hub of excitement...

Yesterday I added some Ludwigia repens to the middle left... I've never tried this plant before and it should break up the green if it grows...

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I also added a large portion of trident java fern and I will be splitting it up and gluing it to the manzanita in the back middle with the leaves coming out towards the front... hopfully its not a algae and scum magnet...

I want to do something with this stump... it's too small for the ficus pumila... I'm thinking of a wabi kusa draped over the back with various emersed plants at a smaller scale... as long as i keep the plants above trimmed back it should do well

Also something that I have noticed since using the salty shrimp for remineralizing the RO water for changes is the snail population has rebounded in a big way... the tank must have been deficient in calcium I guess? Over all theres less of that mushy algae too...

 

[hitmanx]

Now that snails seem to like my tank I'm going to try some other species that may help keep my tank clean... I've had the bigger red and brown ramshorn snails before in harder water setups and I like them... but I want to try malaysian trumpet snails to help with the substrate and nerites of different kinds...

I picked up 6 various specimens today of neritinae and clithon, but I am unsure of the exact species...

They're in the quarantine tank now, as I had a zebra nerite before that died within a day and I think it brought planaria with it...

 

[hitmanx]

I have lots of updates coming, but I wanted to get this problem out of the way first...

For a long time I've been dealing with various deficiencies in the submerssed plants and the recent addition of Hygrophila angustifolia, which is known to be a canary for problems, has been showing signs of deficiency...

These leaves are not new but either the second or third one down... they are some of the brightest areas in the tank...

They are near the surface, some in high flow and some less so... I know some of you will say that holes in leaves are always due to flow and co2 distribution but it shouldn't matter as much in a non injected tank right?

I have stopped using dry ferts and have been using Thrive all-in-one and equilibrium... I'm dosing twice as much as the bottle says for a low tech and im consistently changing about 10% weekly...

Any ideas?

 

[hitmanx]

I did some rearranging in the back, cleared the area above the left stump, added salvinia natans, Hygrophila angustifolia, heterantha zosterfolia to the brighter sections and more crypt wendtii and lutea to the shaded, and started using Thrive all-in-one fertilizer instead of dry ferts... I am seeing deficiencies in the stems and the dwarf sag is living but not sending runners.. . I am about to add osmocote substrate ferts so hopefully I will see an improvement.. . The mexican clay tablets I added back at Xmas definitely added more growth and colour to the crypts I put them near...

Besides some Pilea cardieri placed in a few places, I added another Anthurium, but a different hybrid... smaller with pointy leaves and pointy purple spathes... also added an unknown fern with the roots stuffed in a wet portion of the driftwood with some sphagnum (possibly Korean rock fern)...

I used some sphagnum moss wrapped in hair net hanging on the stump with its toes in the water for the Anthurium...

I still haven't decided what I am going to do with the left stump... but I added some spiky moss at the waterline...

The recent addition of the salvinia has made all the floaters more loose and therefore more prone to moving around and thereby ending up on the far left where it gets stuck on the overflow... so I am trying something new... I used fishing line and little foam pieces to make a floater barrier... it a kind of ugly and you can see the foam from underneath but it's an experiment... surface scum has accumulated within the area now...

The fern has been drying out in the lower humidity this year so I had to trim a bunch of fronds and it's kind of lost its shape... it has an open crown and I'm seriously thinking of getting rid of the thing and maybe starting with a new one that doesn't have such a large rhizome...

Here it is in the moonlight...

 

[TBRO]

Amazing project! I bet it looks cool from below, seeing all the roots in the water.

I’ve only just strayed into the emergant growth area, I’m also amazed by how the emergant plants, gobble up all the nutrients. Like running a high tech underwater scape!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

also added an unknown fern

It is a Polystichum sp. (pointed pinnules and a basal "thumb") so Korean Rock Fern (P. tsussimense)

I had to trim a bunch of fronds and it's kind of lost its shape... it has an open crown and I'm seriously thinking of getting rid of the thing and maybe starting with a new one that doesn't have such a large rhizome...

Cut the middle of the rhizome mass out and then replant some of the younger rhizomes, they naturally go bald in the middle over time.

I’m also amazed by how the emergant plants, gobble up all the nutrients.

The emergent and floating plants look pretty healthy, so I might try upping the fertiliser a little bit for the faster growing submerged stems.

The nutrient reduction potential is really large with these kinds of system. They use the same principle in waste water treatment with <"floating rafts">, and <"vertical flow constructed wetlands">.

cheers Darrel

 

[hitmanx]

It took along time for me to scour the internets to find the probable I'D of Korean rock fern... if only I knew what pointed pinnules and a basal "thumb" was...

Indeed I have always assumed the marginal plants have been taking most of the added fertilizers... but I'm still not convinced the issues are fert related instead of co2 related...

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

if only I knew what pointed pinnules and a basal "thumb" was

Ferns all look the same (bit of a generalisation I know), but the ways of differentiating them are based on the shape of the spore bearing bodies (the sporangia, clustered in a sorus) and the architecture of the fronds.

The frond consists of a central "rachis". The bare bit at the bottom is the "stipe", and above that the green bits are the "frond", usually split into "pinnae". The pinnae terminate in "pinnules", which may, or may not, have an apical point and or/spine.

Sometimes the basal pinnule of the first pinnae of the frond is enlarged into a "thumb". The genus Polystichum has pointed pinnules and a basal thumb, like your plant has.

I don't have a fern guide for N. America, but have a look at this <"UK fern guide"> for a description and glossary.

cheers Darrel

 

[hitmanx]

I don't have a fern guide for N. America, but have a look at this <"UK fern guide"> for a description and glossary.

cheers Darrel

Thanks for this resource... it is helpful

 

[hitmanx]

Changes over time...

Jan 2017

Feb 2017

Mar 2017

Apr 2017

Jul 2017

Aug 2017

Sep 2017

Dec 2017

Feb 2018

May 2018

Jun 2018

Jul 2018

Aug 2018

Sep 2018

Nov 2018

Dec 2018

Jan 2019

Feb 2019

Since the last photo series, I have made consistent 7% water changes and switched to Thrive all-in-one fertz, finally cleaned the poret filter in the sump and overall kept the substrate and sump cleaner by sucking out detritus... the synedra algae is gone finally but pinholes in older submersed leaves have been a problem since last August... The Ludwigia repens has done terrible in all spots I put it... the lysimachia nummularia was growing great and then all of a sudden has decided to grow like crap or not at all... all the new cryptocoryne wendtii and lutea is doing well and I've added a bunch of stems of one of my favourite plants, hygrophila angustifolia to the back... this plant needs tall tanks as it's big and grows relatively fast, but if I keep on top of its size it does create a sense of fullness and movement, but of course it's showing signs of deficiency... I also added heteranthera zosterifolia to various places but it only thrives in the brightest areas in the middle... the dwarf sag "carpet" lives, but refuses to send runners... I just added about 20 osmocote root tabs so we shall see if that changes at all... i am goomg to wait awhile and then up the water column fertz...

The 5 amano shrimp, Siamese Algae Eater and neritina snails are helping to keep things clean as well... I am going to try cherry shrimp again soon as the c. Choprae are finally down in the sump... I was able to net them in desperation and perseverance...

I am now seriously thinking about moving the maidenhair fern to another wabi kusa... I'm sick of it being so oppressive in this setup...