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Tom's Bucket O' Mud - The End

Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Tom
Everything above the water looks awesome! And beneath it isn't really too far behind I'd say.

That echindorus is a great example of how well these do above water. I hope it inspires many to try emersed growing. So many folk now have open top tanks with lights suspended high. The current Aquascaping hobby is ready for this kind of thing and I hope it takes off like a rocket!

Don't trim that plant! Get yourself a hole in the ceiling sorted out 🙂

Cheers, I still love it!

Gavin
 
Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Aye, the submerged planting needs a little of tweaking, but I think I know where to go with it (bar the 4 square feet of foreground, which has me a bit stumped). Hopefully get it straight in the next few weeks, unless my MOT bankrupts me tomorrow!
 
Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Tom

Why not go for a walk in the forest or by the river and see if you can find a branch or 2 you can lay in that open area of the tank.
I think a nice piece of wood with branches breaking through the surface would finish this off nicely. And it could be a 'free' addition 🙂

Are the other emerged plants all from the garden centre? Do you remember what they were? The coloured leaf one in particular?

Cheers

Gavin
 
Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Good suggestions guys, thanks. I think the emergent plants must be stripping almost all the nutrients out of the water column (which is the idea!)... I have some lomariopsis lineata in there already which is growing but very slowly, I wonder if pelia would do any better. Marsilea again I think would be very slow. Might need something with decent roots to get at the soil 1.5" below the sand, or a hardscape solution. Hmm!

Gav, the emergent plants are almost all from homebase/B&Q. As such they're never labelled properly, but the big green/brown is a prayer plant cultivar, and the others are parlour palms, peace lillies and another lilly I can't ID (was labelled 'foliage plant', which isn't very helpful!). The little things you can see suspended on the right hand side are Cyperus alternifolius, which I'll be planting in the substrate as soon as they're tall enough to reach the surface.
 
Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Tom
Are they all planted at the bottom of the tank? Or in baskets near the surface? Did you read up on these particular plants from garden centres or just take a risk on them growing well in this way? I'm sure not all plants they sell would do well, how did you choose???

Had another thought for your open space. How about lots of small swords, low growers with rosette style leaves.
I once saw an underwater shot from the amazon that had endless beds of echindorus. It looked great!

Cheers
 
Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Gav, all bar the giant echino are planted in shower caddies with hydroton (an idea shamelessly stolen from hydrophyte and others). I basically just took a risk with these as they were really cheap. I knew peace lillies would probably be OK as they are often sold as aquarium plants and can last a month or so underwater, and plants tend to do OK with roots in water if they survive the acclimatisation.

I think either swords or crypts will be the way forward, got any links/names of the ones you're thinking of gav?
 
Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Tom
I looked into this recently and the obvious one would be E. Aquartica. There's a few others but as the tanks not too deep this one is probably your best bet.
Theres another one called Parviflorus that I quite like the look of too.

Cheers 🙂
 
Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Just been for an excellent trip to Outside Inside aquatics, came back with 6 otos (first fish, woo!) and a bunch of plants to fill in the big gap in the middle - E. ozelot 'green', C. nevellii/lucens and C. wendtii 'tropica'. Not that cheap, but I have to say the rootstock on the plants is absolutly top notch and I got really good coverage out of them.

They had some really awesome dwarf orange bumblebee cats (Akysis vespa) which I was very tempted by, but going to hold off until the gouramis arrive in a couple of weeks and I can get a feel for how the food chain is going to hold up.

Just spotted a second leech but it vanished into the leaf litter before Icould hook it out. Hope there aren't too many of the blighters.
 
Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Cheers Steve. Yeah, I've read a few articles about this sort of habitat (obviously its not a true biotope), trying to keep everything looking a bit chaotic and as natural as possible given the hodge-podge of plants in the tank.
 
Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Cor!! Pal if your aiming for a beautiful very natural looking planted tank, give yourself a cookie haha.

Really liking this one, very cool, the emergent part is especially sexy 🙂 haha 🙂
 
Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

Was having an idle moment at work today and got to thinking about floating plants - the light above this tank is way off to one side, rather than directly above, so I reckon I could fill about 4-5 inches into the tank on the front two sides with floating plants without shading anything below. Would be a good way of encouraging the gouramis to come to the front I think, and offset the big clump of emergent plants on the other side.

So, what I need is recommendations for floaters (preferably of a reasonable size to reduce escapees), and ingenius and elegant solutions for something to make a floating barrier out of to stop them taking over the whole tank.

Ideas people, chop chop!
 
Re: Tom's Bucket O' Mud - New pics 14/04

BigTom said:
Was having an idle moment at work today and got to thinking about floating plants - the light above this tank is way off to one side, rather than directly above, so I reckon I could fill about 4-5 inches into the tank on the front two sides with floating plants without shading anything below. Would be a good way of encouraging the gouramis to come to the front I think, and offset the big clump of emergent plants on the other side.

So, what I need is recommendations for floaters (preferably of a reasonable size to reduce escapees), and ingenius and elegant solutions for something to make a floating barrier out of to stop them taking over the whole tank.

Ideas people, chop chop!
Click to expand...

Indian fern, Hygro Pinnatifida, most rotalas, Java fern on a floating mesh, the options are endless. Obviously you can go with the boring normal floaters, but the ones I mentioned would be easy to control, they are stems. 🙂

If you want I can send you closed cell foam, it is 1cm thick very similar to what hydrophite uses for the trellis, obviously you will need to cut to the desired shape, but do a couple of rings and you got a very easy floating raft with stems. 🙂
 
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