WALL OF TEXT with your FULL TANK SHOT. Have done so much aquarium stuff lately, it's been fabulous. And exhausting! But I'm certainly not complaining! It's been a welcome distraction from job hunting, which is a form of torture lols
Last Monday I went to Wildwoods World of Water with
@Courtneybst once again to pick up some more mud, stones and plants for this tank, and for my outdoor pond too, and my indoor pond bowl which needed some fancy rice fish (finally sourced some lovely ones!). I always really enjoy visiting, everyone there is super knowledgeable and we always end up having long chats about everything aquarium and pond. I also ended up picking up my first stickleback - Mr Stickle, who I spotted in their large river shrimp-filled feeder tank. We think he is a bycatch from an estuary while catching the shrimps, and he was all alone in there so I took him. He had to go in my outdoor waterlily pond bowl for a week while I prepared the big tank more, as it still had a low amount of ammonia, but after 2 100% waterchanges over a week and even more plants, it's now fine and he's in the big tank! Of course will not add more fish for a bit longer, and keeping up on big waterchanges so he is safe. He is very shy of the camera atm, although he does come to the front a lot when it isn't out. He's very fast and zooms about, constantly on the lookout for food and other fish, definitely a tiny predator. I've been feeding him live food as he doesn't seem to understand anything else yet, when I have some more I'll try to acclimate them to bug bites. I'm looking forward to adding some "friends" for him in the next few weeks, fascinated to see the dynamics! CarpCo now also sell minnows, I'm not sure if I should get both, but I would quite like to lmao.
Something I love about this pond tank is that it's not too expensive to set up - the pond mud was about £10 for a big bag ( I used 2 bags), the pebbles were £8 for a big bag and I've only used a little of it so far. Many of the pond plants I'm using are £2-3 a bunch, so I can get quite a few for not much, and the more expensive plants (around £8) are generally very big and established. I've really filled it up now, adding native
Ludwigia palustris in green and red varieties... and then also some
Ludwigia repens cos they looked similar and I like red lols. I added a large grass at the back left to see what would happen, annoyingly I've lost the name! Will have to go find it... There's also now the beginnings of a carpet, with
Hydrocotyle verticillata, with
Hydrocotyle vulgaris (another native) and some lilaeopsis brasilensis (a classic pond plant and tbh just a plant I seem to put in all my tanks atm). Truly, if someone dangles a nice plant in front of me I cannot resist! Speaking of which, I also got 2
Trapa natans horned nuts, one of which is already growing strong. Oh! And I added some monte carlo from Courtney here and there in areas where I wanted the shape to be seen more, but not see the base structure. This plant always died on me before, so we shall see.
I'm very fast and loose with the nativeness of this tank (it's about 70-30), but it's more important for me to have fun with it than make it a biotope. Honestly, it looks nothing like a pond or a biotope, it's definitely more wabi kusa vibes, it reminds me of flower arranging with my mum when I was a kid. I'm really enjoying thinking up kinda weird hybrid tanks like this! I visited
@George Farmer on Weds with Courtney and we made a very fast scape that I'm actually really pleased with, I'm very happy to even have been asked! It really inspired me to think more about this hobby as an art practice and something I could try and merge with my design side of life. I've finally started going outside and living life more again and been telling a few artist friends about what I'm up to and many of them revealed that they're already watching aquarium and terrarium videos to relax, and are very up for making cool stuff together. It's really exciting, I hope I get to make many more fun tanks alone and in collaborations
🙂 I would love to introduce more artists and designers into the hobby, there is so much cool stuff that could be done, and great to spread the nature love. As much cool stuff as is already being done, I feel there is so much more untapped potential. The visit also made me REALLY want a better backlight to this tank than my quick DIY one, so will have to build that too. I think it would just really elevate the tank to that next level and make it fancy af.
The growth in this tank has been fantastic, with almost all the plants growing very well. The only plant that is uphappy is the
Hippuris vulgaris, which just can't deal with the waterchanges. It grows great for a week and then has to start again and it doesn't like that, it needs consistant water level. A shame as it's very nice, I will take it out and put it in my pond instead. The Hottonia is converting from the underwater form to the emergent form, I think because of the CO2 and is looking great. The starwort is doing the same, and has lovely lush leaves. I'm hoping I can grow a lot of this and have swaths of it as it's a lovely bright green that waves in the flow nicely. I haven't dosed any ferts yet... not sure if I should, and if I do when that should be! Nothing is looking very deficient yet which is great. This scape is such a difference in growth compared to the last scape where many plants dropped dead on me or hardly grew at all for months and months. On some plants I'm seeing 15cm a week! I think in a month or two it's going to be soooooo lush and fabulous. The difference compared to the last tank is why I'm so pleased with it already, not perfect yet of course, but on a nice tragectory. It also looks better irl, I need to get better at photography and staging to represent it properly.
I am at the diatoms stage of the setup now, but not worrying about it. Trying to be chill about things like this and letting it happen instead of being filled rwith rage and trying to buy my way out of it. It will pass
🙂
On Saturday I visited the fabulous garden of
@killi69, it was so lovely to meet such a likeminded creative and kind person, and I loved the way he described his garden and the design of it in a similar way to how we design aquariums!! Since starting this tank I have really begun to realise the enormous potential of merging knowledge, ideas, plants, etc from aquariums, ponds, gardens, everything together in one big fabulous pot and create hybrid nature spaces.
@killi69 is already doing this in his garden and it's just beautiful, and it will jsut continue to get more beautiful each season and year. I can't wait to visit again in August when it will be even more luscious and flowering like mad! I probably should've taken some pictures, but I just enjoyed the chat and the vibes and staring into the ponds at all the different pondlife. I particularly loved to see the fish, they looked in such good condition, so natural and chill in their large pools (check out Courtney on Instagram to see some vids). Particularly beautiful to me were the fat black and blue male
Aphanius mento, which look a bit like Pokemon with a big anime eye. Andre very kindly gave me and Courtney some fry of the Aphanius mento, which have gone in my pond that I had originally planned to put my sticklebacks in. It gave me an idea...
Last Spring, my dad found a lovely second hand tank of 100cm lx40cm dx30cm h online for rather cheap, so of course we couldn't resist. We imagined it in our living room as a fabulous blackwater with emergent houseplants and rare fish, but my mum veto'd it. She is understandably nervous about my antics, as when I was a child my dad went mad with tropical pets in tanks and we ended up with way too many. Eventually I hope the tank will go in the house, but until then it's just been in the allotment shed. Then I realised... it would go perfectly in a lovely shelted spot in the garden by the (nice) shed and patio! This has been accepted by the family as a good spot, so I'm going to set it up as an outdoor pond aquarium for the Aphanius mento, and really get to see them in their full glory. There is electricity in the shed, so I might try to rig up a little pond pump or filter so it does get some flow/filtering. There would be no heater, and no light (unless it really needs it) we're hoping sunlight will be enough.
Andre also gave me some lovely plants for my current pond tank -
Mentha aquatica, Pilularia globulifera, Chara algae (looks like a stem plant), and
beautiful Potamogeton crispus which have all gone in and look great. The chara I'm particularly interested in, I'm not sure if it will survive but we'll give it a go!
I had those on my bedroom wall as a kid, along with loads of ripped out wildlife pics from National Geographic. Maybe when it's done I'll try to make some posters with the photos inspired by that 
