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Resurrection (EA900)

I think personally, I’d wrap it with nylon mesh and call it a day. Having used hessian to make “real” wabi kusa balls, it didn’t last that long before it started shedding fibre all over the place. It was pretty much a sad rotten mess within 6 months.
 
Hey, that's really good! I'm interested to see how you get on holding the soil in place on such vertical sides without it just turning to slurry and falling to the base of the tank. Perhaps you could bind it with some coconut fibres or similar?
Thanks!! I can't believe I managed to get such smooth curves tbh, I thought it would come out a lot more wonky lol. I think it makes a nice contrast to the plants which will hopefully be super wild.

Yeah it might need a bit of a mix for the soil. Also not all of it will be soil, there will be some bags of fine lava rock and maybe a few bigger bits of lava rock in there too. I was thinking on the sides I would add some fine plastic mesh under the hessian as that's the vulnerable bit for soil falling out. The hessian is really usual for tucking in stem plants like I would in a wabi kusa. In my other lowtechs I've had great success with just shoving stems in crevices where they grow out and up towards the light like this.
I think personally, I’d wrap it with nylon mesh and call it a day. Having used hessian to make “real” wabi kusa balls, it didn’t last that long before it started shedding fibre all over the place. It was pretty much a sad rotten mess within 6 months.
Oh yes there will be some fine plastic mesh involved in the vertical bits, found some perfect stuff in the shed yesterday. The thing about just nylon mesh is it makes it harder to have crevices to put plants into it, the hessian makes planting into it easier. I'm not really worried about it rotting as the tank will only be up for a few months.
 
Yesterday I went with @Courtneybst to the local country park for a day of finding pond inspiration and catching sticklebacks, it was fabulous a really beautiful day, proper luscious spring. Definitely going back for a picnic soon, and will bring my fancy camera next too cos it really deserves pretty picsssss. I took some short videos but they don't wanna play :mad:

There were also a lot of caddisfly larvae in the streams which were very interesting to watch, I thought I might keep some of those too, super fascinating creatures. <Sort of related, look at this artist who "collaborates" with caddisfly larvae to make beautiful jewellery pieces>, I've loved that for a long time.

I didn't keep the sticklebacks we caught, but it was great to see them in the wild and see them properly up close - I'm even more sure that they're going to be the fish in this tank. The big one we caught was so beautiful and CUTE, and a really good size... not too big, not too small. I'm setting the tank up properly this weekend, looking forward to see it coming together! I'm hoping to put the sticklebacks in in about a month if all goes well.


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what's the legal situation on collecting wild stickleback?
Technically you'd need a fishing rod licence to fish on any inland waterway in England. The removal of certain fish are limited by numbers but don't think sticklebacks are covered under this quota.
I think if you were caught trapping a few sticklebacks it would be a hard nosed balif that would try and follow through with prosecution.
 
what's the legal situation on collecting wild stickleback? @shangman
they look gorgeous.
They are very gorgeous!! So nice to have such an interesting fish about.

Freshwater rod fishing rules

From the above, the gist send to be that they don't care if you catch small fish like Sticklebacks for some reason. They care about bigger fish that you might catch with a rod, so it's legal to catch Sticklebacks on public land. Tbh the reason I didn't take the babies (v tempting) is in case they had disease cos I want to avoid experiencing another nasty thing so quick. I will be treating for various worms any way just in case.

Beautiful pics and what an ugly cutie! Utie? Cugltie? Ugutie :thumbup:
I hope you are doing well 😘
Definitely an ugly cutie, but I think further on the cute side than ugly!! He also had a subtle irridescence about him. I'm looking forward to seeing how they colour up in my tank, in another pond there were more adults and I'm sure I saw a glint of bright blue from one.

I'm doing good :) Feeling much more recovered from all the horrors of March and April. Looking forward to getting this tank together! I miss having fish in this tank, it needs to be something I can look at again.

crazy how similar they look to colomesus asellus (South American Pufferfish)
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Damn that is a very cute puffer!! They are similar, I think it's that slightly upturned mouth with the big eyes. I definitely see the seahorse vibes from the sticklebacks too.
 
It was a great day and the first time this year I've really felt the sun beating down on my back. Roll on summer! The water the fish were in was quite shallow and not so cold, although @shangman might feel differently!

I did put a couple of the fry into one of my outdoor ponds with lots of plant cover. It'll be interesting to see how they fare and develop.

I was really intrigued by what the water parameters might be where we found them. I stupidly forgot all about that when I got home and poured most of the water away. Luckily there was just enough to get 4 tests in. I didn't bother testing ammonia and nitrite as I assumed the water is well and truly cycled 😅 I didn't have enough water anyway.

Now, I know hobbyist test kits can be off but this test is brand new and seems to align with control fluids. It was nothing like I was expecting...
TDS ~500 (It was swinging from 480 to 600 but most often settled at 500).
pH - 8
GH - 43 (thanks, that's my test fluid drained 🙃)
KH - 29 (also, thanks.)
NO3 - 20

For some reason I expected the water to be really similar to my collected rainwater, with KH 3 and GH 3, but it was anything but. I suppose in these water ways there's a lot of things the water passes over to pick up minerals and a crap ton of things dissolving into the water, including human trash. Even if the results are not pinpoint accurate, the sticklebacks are living in some hardcore water compared to our aquariums!
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It was a great day and the first time this year I've really felt the sun beating down on my back. Roll on summer! The water the fish were in was quite shallow and not so cold, although @shangman might feel differently!

I did put a couple of the fry into one of my outdoor ponds with lots of plant cover. It'll be interesting to see how they fare and develop.

I was really intrigued by what the water parameters might be where we found them. I stupidly forgot all about that when I got home and poured most of the water away. Luckily there was just enough to get 4 tests in. I didn't bother testing ammonia and nitrite as I assumed the water is well and truly cycled 😅 I didn't have enough water anyway.

Now, I know hobbyist test kits can be off but this test is brand new and seems to align with control fluids. It was nothing like I was expecting...
TDS ~500 (It was swinging from 480 to 600 but most often settled at 500).
pH - 8
GH - 43 (thanks, that's my test fluid drained 🙃)
KH - 29 (also, thanks.)
NO3 - 20

For some reason I expected the water to be really similar to my collected rainwater, with KH 3 and GH 3, but it was anything but. I suppose in these water ways there's a lot of things the water passes over to pick up minerals and a crap ton of things dissolving into the water, including human trash. Even if the results are not pinpoint accurate, the sticklebacks are living in some hardcore water compared to our aquariums!
View attachment 188099View attachment 188100
Absolutely creased at those test results lmaoooooooo, maybe British fish aren't as colourful and pretty as the tropicals, but they are HARDCORE. They'll be living in the lap of luxury with 50% waterchanges, pure tap doesn't sound so bad now.

Hope those lil fry do well too!!!
 
Well I planted it up yesterday, and as you can see it's ABSOLUTELY ... cloudy lmao. I guess we'll see when it finally clears up! I've used this pond soil/mud as substrate as it was a nice colour and texture, its a mix of soil with lots of sand and some clay in. Might've been a very bad idea, but I guess we'll find out! This morning it's a bit clearer and definitely promising, though I do need more plants asap.

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I love emergents so obviously there's LOADS here. The grass isJuncus ensifolius which wasn't on my previous lists, but has nice neat growth, mixed with Baldellia ranunculoides (which opened a flower this morning omg), and Menyanthes trifoliata "Bogbean" which will probably get massive! There's also Marsilea quadrifolia, Hippuris vulgaris, Callitriche stagnalis (Starwort), Myriophyllum brasiliensis and Hottonia palustris.

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This is Alisma pariflorum, which is the American version of a British native I was going to get. I went for this one because it looks uncannily like Echinodorus Opacus Iguazu 2009 which i've lusted after before but costs £100 if you can get it. This one was £6.50 so p good alternative, and it has nice flowers too.

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Already there are a selection of weird creatues in there. Here is a leech having an existential crisis.

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And here is a mysterious larvae wriggling about. I'm not sure what it is, there are quite a lot of them in there, can't tell if they're aquatic or not, if they're dying or just confused.

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its a mix of soil with lots of sand and some clay in. Might've been a very bad idea, but I guess we'll find out!
Hopefully this doesn’t cause you never ending algae issues 😅.
Also, have something on hand to kill any little bugs that’s start to take flight.
I made a little terrarium once using moss collected from a local lake area, few days in I had midges everywhere.

Eagerly waiting for that water to clear up too.
 
This is Alisma pariflorum, which is the American version of a British native I was going to get. I went for this one because it looks uncannily like Echinodorus Opacus Iguazu 2009 which i've lusted after before but costs £100 if you can get it. This one was £6.50 so p good alternative, and it has nice flowers too.
:) 50 pounds for a small plantlet.
 
That's a great reveal, everyone's on tenterhooks now because you can't  quite see things clearly!
Let's hope it nots rubbish under there! 😅 I planted it all dry so even I don't really know what it looks like, all the stem plants were v droopy. Definitely need some more plants too, but that's always the case 👀 I want the whole structure I built to be covered like a proper wabi kusa, which is kinda difficult as I'm going for all pond plants, there aren't really any carpeting plants (that I can tell) that work as good cover.

Hopefully this doesn’t cause you never ending algae issues 😅.
Also, have something on hand to kill any little bugs that’s start to take flight.
I made a little terrarium once using moss collected from a local lake area, few days in I had midges everywhere.

Eagerly waiting for that water to clear up too.
TBH, as it's a pond I accept some algae. Especially as I want the plants to grow well, so they're on 100%. I'm going to add CO2 for the lols, just to see what happens, not sure how that will affect the algae!!

I've always got a bit of algaefix on hand too 👀 In case things get bad in the first few weeks before any nice creatures go on.

:) 50 pounds for a small plantlet.
ooooooooooooooohhhhhh, I haven't actually seen it for sale in the UK before!! Well fingers crossed they still sell them in 2 years when I set up a nice big tropical tank again. I hope someone buys these and shows them off in their journal! Such a beautiful plant. I suppose I could rescape my nano tank to just have that in the middle... 👀👀👀
 
TDS ~500 (It was swinging from 480 to 600 but most often settled at 500).
pH - 8
GH - 43 (thanks, that's my test fluid drained 🙃)
KH - 29 (also, thanks.)
NO3 - 20

Nice to see some water quality field data. Interesting results. I believe most surface waters have a much higher TDS than rainwater due to the dissolution of minerals, the contributions of the substrate and groundwater system, and organic compounds produced by decaying plant matter. Exception would be for example an alpine lake fed by snowmelt. Your measured GH and KH values are very high to me! Could that be the influence of the chalk aquifer underlying the Thames basin? Depending on the exact location that could or could not be the case. Case you want to read more.

Pollution by agricultural or urban runoff also increase TDS. However a nitrate value of only 20 mg/l is not indicative of serious pollution. The WHO drinking water standard is 50 mg/l. Nitrate can easily reach 200 to 300 mg/l in canals close to farmland!

I bet those sticklebacks are perfectly happy in there. Apparently they can thrive in brackish or salty water as well, so a high TDS wouldn’t scare them really. RO or rainwater on the other hand would probably not be their cup of tea... 🙂.
 
Well I planted it up yesterday, and as you can see it's ABSOLUTELY ... cloudy lmao. I guess we'll see when it finally clears up! I've used this pond soil/mud as substrate as it was a nice colour and texture, its a mix of soil with lots of sand and some clay in. Might've been a very bad idea, but I guess we'll find out! This morning it's a bit clearer and definitely promising, though I do need more plants asap.

Great work @shangman. Looking forward to the crystal clear result 👍
 
Nice to see some water quality field data. Interesting results. I believe most surface waters have a much higher TDS than rainwater due to the dissolution of minerals, the contributions of the substrate and groundwater system, and organic compounds produced by decaying plant matter. Exception would be for example an alpine lake fed by snowmelt. Your measured GH and KH values are very high to me! Could that be the influence of the chalk aquifer underlying the Thames basin? Depending on the exact location that could or could not be the case. Case you want to read more.

Pollution by agricultural or urban runoff also increase TDS. However a nitrate value of only 20 mg/l is not indicative of serious pollution. The WHO drinking water standard is 50 mg/l. Nitrate can easily reach 200 to 300 mg/l in canals close to farmland!

I bet those sticklebacks are perfectly happy in there. Apparently they can thrive in brackish or salty water as well, so a high TDS wouldn’t scare them really. RO or rainwater on the other hand would probably not be their cup of tea... 🙂.
Great reading of those results! I think it is a flood zone and it's been left a wild park as it couldn't be safely built on. The water levels rise and fall a lot there over the year, sometimes ditches are dry, sometimes you'd be hard pressed to go anywhere without proper wellies it's so swelled up.

Very pleased that the sticklebacks will be happy in tap, tbh the rainwater in a big tank at the top of the house was becoming a bit of a hassle. A bit for the nanos is fine, but more is quite an ordeal. 3 20L cartons a week from the allotment to house and up all the stairs 😂 will have to plan it all better for when I return to tropical!!

Great work @shangman. Looking forward to the crystal clear result 👍
Thanks! Me too, it's cleared up a bit today, but not loads. Remembered that I forget I haven't yet replaced the filter foams 🙃 whoops! No wonder it isn't clearly very fast lmao, just ordered them and will do an extra waterchange tomorrow too to speed it up so I can show off to you all.
 
Hi all,
I'm not sure what it is, there are quite a lot of them in there, can't tell if they're aquatic or not, if they're dying or just confused.
They are Tipula (Cranefly) larvae. They can be terrestrial, or aquatic/semi-aquatic, dependent on species. We usually get <"Tipula maxima"> in the kick samples from the stream on campus and they can be pretty sizable. I don't think you can get an ID from a larvae.

cheers Darrel
 
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