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Mini projects

Myrtle

Myrtle

Member
Joined
21 Aug 2008
Messages
830
Location
Basingstoke
As I have several small tanks and projects on the go, I thought I'd combine them all into one journal for (my) ease.
First out of the blocks is an unheated pond style tank which I'm planning to use for raising medaka (first lot of fry are already hatched).
I've often thought that not enough use is made of flint/chert in aquaria. The shapes and colours can be just as beautiful as the expensive rocks and free if you live down south! I knew I had a collection of decent sized pieces so I rummaged through and managed to build a terraced affair to accommodate plants preferring different depths.
I used ADA Malaya soil because it was on sale and built up the back with crushed lava rock. The plants were all from Lillies Water Gardens and consist of:

Eleocharis acicularis
Eriophorum angustifolium
Juncus ensifolius
Oenathe javanica Flamingo
Gratiola officinalis
Egeria dental
Sagittaria graminea

I may well end up moving some to the ponds outdoors if they become too big, but hopefully it won't get too out of control!
I was initially going to leave it unfiltered but I changed my mind after building it so had to squeeze a tiny pump in the right front corner. The water drips back into the tank via the branch and moss so, theoretically, creates movement on the surface but little flow.
Anyway, here are a few pics
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To be continued...
 
Courtneybst said:
The cross section looks great! It'll look really good grown in I'm sure.

What kind of rocks are they? From a river?
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They're literally dug out off my garden. I've had them around my pond for a couple of years hence the patina which will probably disappear. The Egeria is covering up the largest one but the shape is so tactile. I've always loved these whole lumps of flint and wish I had the space and vision to do something magnificent with them!
 
Thank you @Wookii !

Onto the next mini project. This one has only been running for a few weeks and came about when I found myself with a tank with a cracked base. Not trusting my DIY repair skills enough to fill it entirely with water, I opted to use it as a marshy terrarium inspired by/copied from @Tyko_N 's creations. I'd been looking for somewhere to house my pinguiculas as the exo-terra was too wet for them and they didn't like the misting schedule. I took a piece of the double wall polycarbonate that I use as lids and cut it to fit the base of the tank, sealed it in place with aquarium silicone and breathed a huge sigh of relief when it passed the leak test!
A lot of the planting is experimental from my perspective; Utricularia gramnifolia is not something I have ever tried in any capacity before but figured I'd give it a shot and so far it's still alive. Terrestrial mosses are another experiment for me and after stumbling across The Bryophyta Nursery on Etsy I thought I'd give it a shot. I'm a bit wary of most moss sellers on Etsy as it's often ripped up from the wild, but this is a full nursery set up where everything is grown for sale, is shipped dehydrated along with specific growing conditions preferred in case you forget! So, without further ado, here is the Pinguicula mossarium:
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The sinningia leaf cutting has been replanted! I only spotted that when I uploaded the photos!
Plant list
Mosses:
Christmas moss
Racomitrum canescens
Dialytrichia mucronata
Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus
Fissidens taxifolius
Some random mosses taken from the exo terra

Everything else
Pinguicula x Tina
P. emarginata x moctezumae
A ping which I can't remember!
Marsilea crenata
Ophiopogon
Laegedandra meeboldii Red
A couple of carex from the reduced bin
Several cuttings (sinningia and clubmoss)
Urtricularia gramnifolia

The majority of the land is made up of a mix of lava rock and a soil mix made from sphagnum, orchid bark, sand, the soil from around the pinguicula and some extra perlite. The section under the wood and underwater is mostly sphagnum, sand and a wee bit of tropica substrate and the small area with the Seryiu stone is mostly sand and tropica soil. The moss on the limestone (yes, that is moss, not a lump of mud!) prefers to grow on calcareous stones so a small piece has also gone to the emersed area of the Muna island biotope. I'm using rainwater and DI water only (an occasional bit of aquarium water from one of the rainwater tanks) and we'll see what happens. Some diatoms in the miniscule submerged area but not much else wrong (yet). The marsilea may well take over the UG but so be it. Water changes with a turkey baster!
 
That's going to look great once the plants have grown in a bit @Myrtle ! Don't count on the U. graminifolia sitting nice and quiet in that corner though, if it likes the conditions it's going to be all over the place pretty soon, good that it has such cute flowers so you can't consider it a weed ;)
Myrtle said:
I'm using rainwater and DI water only (an occasional bit of aquarium water from one of the rainwater tanks) and we'll see what happens.
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I don't think you have to be overly concerned about minerals if you can occasionally do a small water change to avoid them building up in the soil. The requirements of most carnivorous plants tends to be wildly exaggerated (there are even some Pinguiculas and Sarracenia growing on calcareous soil), my indoor ones (Pinguicula, Nepenthes, Drosera, and U. graminifolia) get soft tap water and are doing more than fine. The moss might be more finicky though.
 
Thanks, I hope so! I've never succeeded with any Urtricularia sp before, even bisquamata, so I'm really hoping this wroks as UG is so much cheaper than buying other Urtricularia! My tap water is pretty hard so it's just as easy to use the rainwater/DI water from the Spotless stations as I already have to get that for the Mister in the exo terra. In spring/summer I plan on using water from one of the ponds occasionally to add some food for the UG. I did try to go for mosses that had a relatively wide tolerance of temperature/substrate so I may well get away with adding ferts occasionally, but time will tell. It'll probably just end up as a sea of christmas moss and Marsilea!
 
Change is afoot!
Well, I quickly realised that I had overestimated how much room I had above the tank for emersed growth and it wasn't long before the S graminea hit the bottom of the cupboard above! Probably not helped by the slightly lower lighting than it would have preferred. The emergent plants moved to my ricefish barrels outdoors which left me with a nice tank just crying out for a pair of Lyretail Killis. It's a mish-mash of plants now, with some stunted rotala, a red lotus, egeria densa and litorella (which seems to hate staying planted), plus some trimmings of some more faster growing stems for good measure. I couldnt find anywhere to put my cheap echinodorus so it's in there too. It has been home to some low grade cherries and so far I've only lost one to a hungry killifish, though they mostly ignore them. The moss log/filter contraption has been moved to the Betta tank as I couldn't get a tight lid on with it there, and the tidal 35, complete with plants, now filters this.
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The terrarium cum bog thingy has started growing in nicely, though I replaced the grasses/rushes with a pepperomia and a selaginella cutting. All the mosses from The Bryophyte Nursery are doing well and springing into life. The pings are loving it and the leaf pulls from the P. x tina have already produced 4 new plants. It's also proved to be a good spot for the Anubias Pangolino as the mosses are slow growing enough not to swamp them too quickly. I also added a Cryptocoryne albida brown which was being swamped by other crypts elsewhere and as yet, I've not killed the UG!
However... I have accidentally introduced cyno into the tank. I moved some monoselenium tenellum from the arium without realising there was a spot of cyno on it. The cyno seemingly loved the residual agar from the UG and I had to remove the portion that was under the water. I think it's under control now in here and the arium, but sadly the other tank I accidentally introduced it to is an ongoing battle. The water portion (which was due a top up when I took the photo) is home to a couple of tiny bladder snails and some daphnia, plus whatever other life that happened to be in the daphnia tank when I squirted some in! The land is home to some tropical isopods (if theye haven't crawled out) that I have breeding in the big arium.
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Low Tech, low expectaions.
Following the fry tank having a whole tub of shrimp food fall into it, I figured a rescape wouldn't hurt. I always go for natural/biotope type tanks so I fancied trying something different this time, so I present to you my 12l homage to a dutch style scape. Absolutely no experience with dutch tanks, and I know this only loosely counts as dutch (apologies to proper Dutch scapers!). It has no CO2 and just a sponge filter so flow may be an issue! It's currently home to a few water slaters, daphnia and whatever else is living in the water in my outside tubs. I anticipate the H. zosterifolia being removed pretty quickly for being too rampant, but I had some trimmings from the paradise fish tank so figured "why not?" There are currently too many species in there but it wasn't properly planned or scaped (like most of my tanks!) so there'll be a lot of moving things out. I'm hoping to slowly change some of the thuggish plants for more appropriate ones as time goes on, but I just wanted to see how this would work first. Yeah, it looks like cr*p right now!
20230529_074255.jpg


Bog beast
The bog/terrarium affair is growing in well. I accidentally introduced cyno to it but that's cleared up now. The baby pings are all doing well and the ranunculus which I tried (and failed) to grow low tech is doing well emersed. The mosses are all still going, bar one, and it's now situated on my windowsill.
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I'm loving the Bog Beast, look at the colour of that flower!
I saw pings at the garden centre but chose a drosera instead, wish I'd bought both!
 
Little update on the low tech, nano, dutch-inspired tank:
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The H. zosterifolia has been replaced by Java fern as it's thick enough to hide the sponge filter but won't need much doing to it. The tank is only 30cm x 20cm so clearly far too many plants for a real Dutch scape, but 3 plants would be boring! Finding plants that won't grow like weeds, have small leaves and don't need CO2 wasn't as hard as I thought, but it's still trial and error as to what will work. I've gone for a few plants that I've never grown before as I've never had the right tank, such as AR mini, Myriophyllum guyana and Lobelia cardinalis 'Mini'. So far nothing has melted and it all appears to be growing, so that's a bonus! I know the sponge filter is a bit unconventional, but I'm also keeping daphnia in here to see if they can help with preventing algae spores from developing by filtering them out during feeding. Not scientific and probably won't work, but it's free fish food either way!
 
Myrtle said:
View attachment 205892
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Is that the Lysimachia in the center there? 😃
How has it been for you so far, did it settle down quickly?
I kidnapped a few bits of feral Lysimachia from a ditch last week or so, but so far they still seem very confused and are darting for the surface :lol:
Maybe not strange, norwegian ditch to tropical high tech tank is probably a bit of a change in environments!

Myrtle said:
View attachment 206500
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If its on the right here it looks like its adopted the submersed form well with the nice round leaves?

I think the little dutch tank is really cute 😊
 
Hufsa said:
Is that the Lysimachia in the center there? 😃
How has it been for you so far, did it settle down quickly?
I kidnapped a few bits of feral Lysimachia from a ditch last week or so, but so far they still seem very confused and are darting for the surface :lol:
Maybe not strange, norwegian ditch to tropical high tech tank is probably a bit of a change in environments!


If its on the right here it looks like its adopted the submersed form well with the nice round leaves?

I think the little dutch tank is really cute 😊
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Yes, it's the one on the right, I cheated a bit by taking some that was already growing into the water around my pond! I only have the golden one though. If I were a plant, I'd be grateful for being moved from a Norwegian ditch to a nice, warm tank!
Kaliilo said:
Tanks look great Myrtle! I really like the bog beast, the plants look so happy in that
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Thanks :) I've never tried this kind of thing so I'm quite pleased it's done OK.
 
All change again! I've moved the Lyretail killies to a different tank, as the tank is partly meant to be viewed from above, the cover to prevent jumping kind of spoilt it a bit... It now serves as a grow out tank for the medaka seeing as they're supposed to be viewed from above.
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It's filterless and unheated which it was intended to be initially, but the HOB is ready to go back on if needed. The red lotus really didn't like this tank so the riccia is serving as stand in lily pads. The Eleocharis and Littorella do seem to quite like it and even the Hygro Rosannervig has some nice colour under the cheap clip on grow light! All in all, it's a nice little tank to look at when I make coffee :)
 
Small update on my pico Dutch tank; I've gone to the dark side! Yep, it now has CO2 by way of the Ziss citric acid/baking soda system and for a tank this size (a whopping 12 litres) it's actually pretty good (once you've got past the sheer Hell of watching for drips for hours and timing them). Really should have cropped the top of that photo... If anyone can name the random stem next to the Lindernia, I'd be very grateful!
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In comparison, with many of the same plants, here is the low-tech version which is staying low tech. Just increased the lighting which was on 50% but the internodal spacing on the Shinnersia was too big, so it's now on 100% Nicrew power. The difference between the M Guyana in the 2 tanks is like night and day. Hopefully the added light will help in the cube tank. Who knows, it'll probably just explode in algae.
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All in all, I'm kinda getting the hang of trimming and shaping a bit, though there's a long way to go still and it's a long way from being an actual Dutch scape, though I've tried to follow the rules as best I could without being limited to 3 plants!
 
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