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Hi all, This one <"International Code of Botanical Nomenclature">. Where the name has "L." after it it was named by <"Linnaeus">. cheers Darrel

Hi all, There has been some shuffling of names, mainly because DNA has shown that the relationships between plants is <"slightly different from the existing taxonomy">, but many names are still the ones that <"Linnaeus first used">. For <"plants cladistics"> and DNA have largely confirmed the...

Hi all, What Marcel (@zozo) says. It is that they renamed all the families with non-standard names so that they were named after their type genus. This meant that the Cruciferae became the "Brassicae" etc. Cheers Darrel

Hi all, The carrot family, now officially the Apiaceae, (what sort of name is that?) but formerly the Umbelliferae and always "Umbellifers" to me. Cheers Darrel

Hi all, It looks more like "Lesser Water-parsnip", but all umbellifers look fairly similar. Cheers Darrel

Hi all, I think he used John Innes Compost (JI), which has lime added and this meant that, even though his tap water was soft, over time the tank water became harder, which wasn't ideal for the Licorice Gourami (Parosphromenus) that he started with. If you have hard tap water, normally you...

Hi all, It looks about right. I'd go for deeper. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Potentilla anserina, unsurprisingly known as "Silverweed". cheers Darrel

Hi all, You need to try Utricularia gibba first, before you move onto the hard stuff. I may have <"some available"> ;). cheers Darrel

Hi all, That is only because I've killed a greater variety of Utricularia sp. than you have. I've just read a paper that suggests the situation is <"more complicated that you might imagine">. Utricularia gibba "catches" a lot of dissolved organic matter in its bladders, which may be why it...

Hi all, This has been really interesting, it definitely could account for the <"boom and bust"> many of us have experienced with various Utricularia spp. It is lack of food items that has caused the plants to "bust". cheers Darrel

Hi all, "Well" would be my guess, although even the summer may be too cool for it. cheers Darrel

Hi all, I grew for a <"while emersed and it did quite well">. I've never tried it in a tank, and I think it was cold that killed it in the end. As a plant it doesn't <"actually have any roots"> (no Utricularia spp. does), so I guess the planting medium doesn't matter that much. Other than...

Hi all, I'd probably go on the 7% total nitrogen. so that is approx. 0.07g (or 70 mg) in 1 mL of liquid fertiliser. Milligrams per litre (mg/L) and ppm are equivalent measurements so 1 mL of fertiliser in 1 litre is equivalent to 70ppm and 1 mL in 10 litres = 7ppm. That is probably a bit...

Hi all, I assume it was <"developed for the USA">. If I wanted to create a fertiliser that produced a pretty instant greening response, it would be something with a lot of nitrogen, and probably in the form of urea, to reduce the risk of <"fertiliser burn"> in terrestrial plants. My guess is...

Hi all, Have a look at @Bart Hazes <"posts">. The "Miracle-Gro", (from the <"It's very Green thread">), perks the plants up pretty instantly. <"I guess it is the urea"> content, but I don't actually know. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Yes just to keep the pH below pH7 and make sure all the TAN was as NH4+, it would stop it degassing and it would ensure that the ammonium ion was plant available. The other advantage would be that it may limit microbial nitrification, even if some microbes survived the initial...

Hi all, Afternoon John, my apologies to Karl as well. Curiouser and curiouser. I don't know if @alto has any thoughts? Could you try it again at without remineralizing the rain-water? I might add a dash of white vinegar (or Vit C./Citric acid) as well, that should ensure the pH is below pH7...

Hi all, What was the nitrate measurement at the end of the experiment (or the combined NO2 + NO3 levels)? I can't see a mechanism for nitrification, but that doesn't mean that I'm not missing something. cheers Darrel

Hi all, No, it definitely doesn't invalidate your result, whatever happens you have contributed to the sum of human knowledge. If people try similar experiments, and come up with similar results, then we know that our present view of ammonia uptake in plant/microbe systems isn't right. But...

Hi all, I honestly don't know what happened to the ammonia you had added. It may have undergone nitrification etc. , but there are all sorts of questions. Did you start with RO water? If you did? What other nutrients did you add to it? etc. If a study has been published as a peer reviewed...

Hi all, Honestly you can't conclude that. There is a huge amount of scientific literature that looks at <"TAN removal from waste water">, some using <"nitrogen labelled isotopes">. One point would be that plant nitrification is always "plant/microbe" nitrification, it is almost impossible to...

Hi all, I must admit, before today, I had no idea that urea had such a low toxicity to fish. If I'd known more about animal physiology it would have helped, but the penny should still have dropped a lot earlier. I've been regarding urea and ammonia (NH3) as toxic at much the same...

Hi all, I'd just be paranoid about a pump malfunction dumping a large amount of urea in the tank. In the short term it wouldn't be like a CO2 dump (<"urea has very low toxicity to fish">), it would just depend how quickly the ammonia was liberated, and how much was mopped up by the plants and...

Hi all, As far as we know it is just one species. I've had a much <"smaller growing plant"> but I don't know what might happen with a bit more TLC. There are some <"pictures of one of Amano's tanks"> with enormous emersed plants. This was one of @hydrophyte's grown on a raft. cheers Darrel

Hi all, A lot depends on the wood. In my experience these types are the most resistant to decay. Real "bogwood", wood that has been encased in a peat bog for hundreds, or thousands of years, Oak (Quercus robur) heart wood, from either branches or roots. Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)...

Hi all, It is covered by <“CITES”> and is on the IUCN red list, so I think it is pretty unlikely you could obtain any legally, and there would certainly be ethical issues even if you could. Cheers Darrel

Hi all, Some wood lasts really well, real bog wood (either pine or oak), Mopani, Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga) are all good ones. The longest lasting one I’ve found is Oak heart wood. Cheers Darrel

Hi all, That is interesting, and spectacularly chlorotic . <"What about manganese"> (Mn)? It isn't plant mobile and its deficiency causes chlorosis in hard water. Very high Fe:Mn ratios can also effect Mn++ ion uptake. Molybdenum (Mo) definitely isn't mobile within the plant either, but (in...

Hi all, I've done that as well. cheers Darrel

Hi all, New one for me, it looks very promising. cheers Darrel

Hi all, It isn't really <"an original idea">, when I worked on the Nursery it was the method we used to get the right amount of <"liquid feed in the irrigation water">. I think we should have checked the strenght with a conductivity meter, but I don't remember any-one ever checking. cheers Darrel

Hi all, I'd try that, I don't know whether it will work, but my guess is that it will. cheers Darrel

Hi all, If it bothers you I wouldn't necessarily add iron every week. I'd use the colour as an indication of when to add iron, so basically when the water is no longer pink tinged add some more. cheers Darrel

Hi all, I'd be pretty confident that the number of described Hemigrammus species is just a tiny fraction of the actual number of separate species. I wonder if that contains the fact that Tai Strietman was alluding to cheers Darrel

Hi all, I've never seen any in the UK that weren't platinum coloured (so presumably tank bred), but they are really nice fish. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Now that really is a lot of Fissidens, all kudos to @buttons. cheers Darrel

Hi all, It may be a CO2 effect, gases are more soluble at lower temperatures. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Lovely. It has grown in really well. Your emersed fern has done well. (Photo from May 2015) cheers Darrel

Hi all, Nymphoides peltata is nice. It may survive outside, it is probably a form of M. aquaticum. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Snail, they love Lobelia cardinalis. cheers Darrel

Hi all, They are definitely <"Simuliidae larvae">, you only get them in flowing water. The major down-side is the female adults bite. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Very nice. I think it is probably a Liverwort rather than a fern prothallus. It has gemmae on the thallus and obvious pores, so <"Marchantia polymorpha"> looks a possible ID. The grass looks to be either Dactylis glomerata or Poa "compressa", you may be able to tell which from the...

Hi all, I've grown it in a pot for years, it survives some winters here outside but not all of them. I've never grown in anywhere wet though. cheers Darrel

Hi all, It is native to Southern Africa, I know it grows in Botswana, but it may not make it to RSA. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Brilliant. Things are looking good. There is always a market for local bred Rams, so if you do grow some of them on they could be a useful source of "pocket" money. cheers Darrel

Hi all, You need to feed Liquifry (or powdered dry food) with something that wriggles. You need movement to elicit the feeding response in Cichlid fry, with a bit of luck once they've started on the live food they will sample the dry food fed at the same time. I've got some micro/Banana worms...

Hi all, They are just happy fish, if they have a complex environment they will behave naturally, like they are doing. cheers Darrel

Hi all, That is the advantage of Heliamphora spp. They come from relatively high altitude close to the equator in Venezuela etc. so they don't experience any seasons, just a cooler night. I used to have a Darlingtonia californica & several Dionaea muscipula in the lab. in "goldfish bowls"...

Hi all, Tom I've just posted the link on the <"BCA forum">, so you will probably get a string of begging PM's from rabid Apistogramma fans this evening. Mark Breeze would be your best bet. He might swap? cheers Darrel

Hi all, It will be interesting to see, it would be brilliant if they will grow "wet". It may well be different in the tank. A lot of plants grow well wet in moving water, but don't do so well in standing water (so presumably an oxygen effect). In the tank the water will be oxygenated and...

Hi all, Just gorgeous. I've only ever seen pictures before and nothing with that intensity of colour, these look fantastic. Bob Wiltshire says they aren't too difficult (most macmasteri complex Apistogramma are relatively trouble free), and he is a pretty good source. <"Apistogramma hoignei -...

Hi all, Very nice. I'd definitely raise it up, so the base is just out of the water. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Perfect tank. Go for it. I haven't got a picture but I used to have a big plant of Heteranthera zosterifolia that eventually formed floating leaves and flowered, it added a whole new dimension. cheers Darrel

Hi all, One of the smaller Nepenthes hybrids should be all right. cheers Darrel

Hi all, New one on me, and a quality plant. Might be ferts., but bizarrely because even though it is growing emersed from the fish tank, it is probably low humidity. It is a problem you get in the winter with all mono-cots (Orchids, Parlour palms etc) from warm humid environments. It...

Hi all, You can never spend too long on Apistogramma forums. They are the perfect fish for your tanks and soft water. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Brilliant I love flowering flowering plants. BigTom will need to find the picture of it, but he had an enormous flowering Amazon Sword in one of the early incarnations of the "Bucket....". Your Hart's Tongue Fern looks good as well, has your unknown plant in the moss grown? and if it...

Hi all, Ludwigia sedioides looks to be growing well. I'll be interested to see what happens with your Fatsia japonica leaf (front left). There is a bush at the university (just outside the lab. in fact) and the dead leaves stay intact for years, but I've always been a bit worried about...

Hi all, Found it, it was on the BCA forum <Nannostomus eques, a little further than I got last time!!>. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Muehlenbeckia axillaris. Ste Chesters breeds/has bred them. I'll see if I can find the posts (may be on Apistogramma forums). cheers Darrel

Hi all, I think Ed Seeley grew it at one point, and I was very keen on getting a plant. It maybe a size issue, as well as having a high light demand. There were plants in the glasshouse pond in Munich Botanic Garden (along with all sorts of other covet-able plants), but they were quite...

Hi all, I think it will probably be all right, but you can buy small plants of the Bird's-Nest Fern (Asplenium nidus) at Garden Centres etc, they would eventually get too big, but would be fine for a few years. Paulo (LondonDragon) bought a really nice terrestrial Microsorum at IKEA, in this...

Hi all, Looks like Utricularia graminifolia on that photo. cheers Darrel

Hi all, Fantastic tank, one of my favourites No, it looks like a vascular plant, you'll need to let it grow, but it may be an Epilobium sp. I think if it has survived outside it must be Hart's-tongue Fern (Asplenium scolopendrium), because all the other ferns with similar undivided fronds...

Hi all, Thanks Ed, Crencichla pictures noted in "400 gallon" they are lovely. This is Apistogramma megaptera, this one belonged to Lukasz "Ruki", a great Polish Apistogramma breeder. cheers Darrel

Hi all, I think Mark Breeze is the ~ only person with these in the UK. megaptera ("Breitbinden") occasionally arrives as a contaminant, a male should be findable, I'm not sure about females however. A. hoignei also appears occasionally. I managed to kill mine by over-feeding them, but for the...

Hi all, I've got Veronica beccabunga as well, it is a good flowering plant and will grow both in the water and wet emersed.When I dug the pond out, I threw all the limestone rubble back in to make terraces, and these mossed over really quickly. I don't top the pond up, so it has quite a large...

Hi all, Get away with you, top quality food for free and Apistogramma (and all other fish love them), that is partially why I have the buckets. cheers Darrel

Hi all, I've now found that as well as Daphnia, Cyclops, Ostracods and Asellus. Lumbriculus spp. are pretty common in ponds. After Gerard ("Frothhelmet") sent me the "California Blackworms", I was able to compare them with the small annelid worms that I'd collected in the submersed moss and...

Hi all, They lose all their fronds if they dry out, and look horrible but they don't actually die. They are quite resilient and if you cut off all the crisped dead fronds and keep the plant watered, new fronds will appear. cheers Darrel

Hi all, This pretty much sums up my philosophy as well. Lots of plant mass just makes things a whole lot easier. cheers Darrel

Hi all, I know why I couldn't be an aquascaper, I'd have to cut my own hands off before I laid a finger on that tank, the moss is brilliant. cheers Darrel

Hi all, That is brilliant Tom, do you know if they have been spawned many times before in captivity? cheers Darrel

Hi all, Like "Ansarka" says they aren't really flowers (these only occur in the angiosperms "flowering plants"), but the spore bearing capsules. Mosses and Liverworts are Bryophytes and the green plant is actually the gametophyte generation (n), and the capsule the sporophyte (2n), so the other...

Hi all, Luis, I just found them in a little pile by the filter sponge, green cuboid seeds, about as big as match head, with a small green shoot starting to grow out (a bit like a Nymphaea bulb when it starts growing). They didn't have any roots (roots normally develop before shoots on seeds)...

Hi all, On the scape I left originally the seeds germinated as soon as they had fallen off. It took me a while to work out what they were, as the fruit were still green and it looked like vegetative propagation from a bulbil. The next time I kept an eye on the scape, and they definitely were...

Hi all, Cute, good news is that it doesn't look like a Carpet Beetle (Anthrenus verbasci), the adults like flowers, but the larvae like woolly carpets. They have clubbed antennae, but a dome shaped, patterned elytra. It might be a Pollen Beetle, again because of the clubbed antennae, but it...

Hi all, I think it is a Strangler Fig, so possibly yes. I used to have a large Ficus benjamina (also a "Strangler"), that produced aerial roots into an open-topped galvanised water tank. It had originally been in a very small pot, but as it grew the basal roots were mainly embedded in the...

Hi all, Like the Fig (Ficus lyrata) in the planted/flooded photo, very snazzy. Have you had it long? cheers Darrel

Hi all, I think breeding is quite important, if you have a look on the "Parosphromenus Project" pages you can see that the situation is fairly desperate in the wild in Sumatra and Borneo: Parosphromenus Project: <Home>. Cheers Darrel

Hi all, Try pollinating them, you need a fine paint brush, and just rub it up and down the flower spikes. I'm not sure which Aponogeton I have (ordinary A. crispus probably, white flower, single spike, self fertile), but they flower all the time and set plenty of seed. It takes about 6 weeks...

Hi all, Sad the way things go, you can't compete with cheap gas in the Netherlands and Spanish plastic unless the Government are willing to do their bit. You'd be fine now, they still have the CO2, but they use IPM for pest control. When I worked on the nursery we were told to be careful with...

Hi all, Good post, these are the questions that we need answered, unfortunately I don't know the answers to many of them, and I don't have access to PAR meter. Again purely guess work, but I would assume that aquatic mosses will have fairly low LCP values, and I don't see that "somewhere...

Hi all, We do <http://www.bryoecol.mtu.edu/chapters/9-1LightShade.pdf> cheers Darrel

Hi all, Straight RO, or very, very dilute for the misting. It definitely will. I don't think so, if the light levels are too high the photo-systems of the moss will suffer damage whatever happens. Bryophytes aren't like higher plants, they will have maximum productivities orders of magnitude...

Hi all, No, they do better emersed, but if you had enough CO2........ cheers Darrel

Hi all, It definitely would be a waste of time for the mosses, but higher plants like Tomatoes will show a response to higher CO2. I would think for the plants you might grow DSM it wouldn't offer much appreciable increase in growth rate. From <Carbon Dioxide In Greenhouses> cheers Darrel

Hi all, Genius, works for Lichens (if you want to age a stone trough etc). I think you are right about the drying, and it won't be an issue for you. Try Tom's method, if you get brown tips you need to keep the lid on for longer. If I was going to remove it, I'd definitely take the lid off...

Hi all, I think it would be better in contact with the mat, but I don't think it will matter too much. It isn't a very aesthetic option, but I'd go for bubble-wrap, or polystyrene, rather than the foam squares. You would need a rectangle the size of the tank, with the footprint of the mat cut...

Hi all, I've only ever grown it as an emersed plant in the same conditions you would use for most carnivorous plants, acid, nutrient poor growing conditions and no fertilisers. I'd try something like peat fibres or sphagnum as a rooting medium to get it going. <utricularia graminifolia | UK...

Re: A Chocolate Puddle - pic update pg 20 Hi all, I've got to agree with the others, it is a real triumph. cheers Darrel

Re: A Chocolate Puddle - quick update with video pg 17 Hi all, Matt have a look on caudata.org for culturing guides <http://www.caudata.org/forum/f1173-advanced-newt-salamander-topics/f11-food-live-frozen-freeze-dried-pellets-etc/>, and there are quite a few posts on the BCA forum...

Re: A Chocolate Puddle Now with Chocolates and licorice Hi all, I think you may need to raise the Calathea apex above the water level, as when potted they are prone to rotting if they stay too wet. I think Tom had them, so hopefully he will be able to say which bits of his were submersed. If...

Re: A Chocolate Puddle Hi all, I'd agree, and the Cyperus would be fine with the root submerged. The other option would be to keep them emersed, and plant a trailer in them. A carpet plant like Glossostigma or Hemianthus would be good, and these do very well in this type of situation, or you...

Re: A Chocolate Puddle Hi all, That is a brilliant tank Gill, with the Hydrocotyle as a floater it is the look I like. cheers Darrel

Hi all, N. mortenthaleri? (rather than N. rubrocaudatus) never kept them, but the males are meant to be quite aggressive with one another. cheers Darrel

Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - RO advice needed please Hi all, The only real ways of getting rid of the phosphate would be with plants. You could precipitate it out bicarbonate ions (HCO3-) (this is how it works in the pipes, lead phosphate complexes are formed in the alkaline water, and are...

Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - RO advice needed please Hi all, It is from added NaOH, that is why the TDS is only 50ppm, the water is still soft (it doesn't have any carbonate buffering (dKH)) although the pH is at pH8. Because there is a relatively small number of OH- ions in solution (we know...

Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - RO advice needed please Hi all. Same here, I've been really interested in how it is going right from the start. I've got some other shrimps for Tom, we don't knpw quite what they are, they were bought as "Green Shrimp", from the local MA, but they are mainly a very...