Container (dirted) plants.

These are 2 x 3" x 1" glass jars that have been planted with a single Dwarf Sag plant, (Sagittaria Subulata) and 3 Parva plants, (Crytocorne Parva). There is a layer of Tropica plant growth substrate in the bottom of each container and they are topped with gravel to hold the plants in place.
Dwarf Sag 18-28C, Parva 22-28C

Jan 2018 - Aquarium Roundup

Window Aquarium

22 litre Window aquarium with 8 White Cloud Mountain Minnow. My home made Matten filter is working well. The plants are dosed with EasyCarb and fertilizer although the growth not great - possibly due to gravel substrate.

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Round Vase Aquarium

6.5 litre Vase aquarium. This tank has an air lift filter made from a drink bottle and plastic pipe. The media is Alfagrog. There is some clay granules plant media in the base and then this is covered with Alfagrog. Two baby WCMM live in the tank. No extra heating is installed the fish are happy at room temperature at the moment this is 18.3c. (It is useful to have cycled media available for new projects)

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White Cloud Minnow Winter accommodation.

The minnow in this 27 litre cube aquarium were in the summer tub pond last year. I brought them into the house when the weather turned cooler in October. There are the original adults plus about 15 young fish. The Vase and Window aquarium contain another 10 young fish that were bred in the tub last summer. I will transfer them outside again when the weather warms up. Aquarium is at ambient room temperature of about 18c.

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Plant grow-out Aquarium

I use this 27 litre aquarium as a stock tank for growing on plants to use in other tanks. There are some Red Cherry Shrimp in there, together with a Cappuccino Snail, Ramshorn and Malaysian trumpet snails and 2 amano shrimp. A small Chinese Hillstream Loach also wanders around the tank. The rear integrated filter and high plant growth seems to keep the water in good condition and the loach seems to be doing well in this tank.

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Red Cherry Shrimp Aquarium

This is my 24 litre Red Cherry Shrimp Tank. I filter is with 2 Air Sponge filters. I had trouble with filament algae so I cleaned this out as much as possible and added extra plants to absorb nutrients. I have also increased the amount of water changes I do. The shrimp seem to be doing OK with some breeding.

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Live bearer Aquarium.

This is my "Livebearer" aquarium It is 55 litres and contains Endler guppys and Red Wagtail Platys. In addition I have 4 Corydoras and a Siamese Algae eater in there. The substrate in Clay granules and the plants are fed and dosed with EasyCarb. It is filtered with a sponge airlift filter and internal power filter.

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AquaNano 40 Aquarium.

My "AquaNano 40" - 55 litre aquarium has a heavy growth of Cryptocorne plants. It contains 8 home bred Kribensis together with 3 Ember tetra and 4 Red Cherry Barb. It is probably too heavily stocked but is has a large integrated filter at the rear with Sponge and BioHome media. I also do frequent 50% water changes.  So the water quality is very good and the fish are doing well. It has been set up for about 4 years now so I will refresh it this summer.

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Glass Vase experiment

Here is a little experiment with a Glass Vase I have setup. I added some substrate, then planted it with 3 spare plants. It is in the window next to my 50 Litre tank. I am interested to see if the plants will grow. There is no heating or filtering so regular water changes are required. (I will not be adding any fish to the container due to its small size.) I just checked the temperature and it is 17.5 deg C.

I will post updates to show what happens.

Aquarium update - 15th October 2017

This is an update of all of my aquariums @ 15th October 2017...

This is the fry tank in the greenhouse. I removed about 20 White Cloud Mountain Minnow from the Summer tub pond and they are growing well. It also holds my stock of Ramshorn and Malaysian trumpet Snails. I like to keep a few of these in my tanks as a "cleanup crew", but when they become too numerous I move them out to this tank. The tank is filtered with the Boyu external filter and it is working well.

This is my Carnivorous plant terrarium. I bought these two plants from LIDL supermarket for £6 the pair. There is a Pitcher plant and Venus fry trap. I thought it would be interesting to try and grow these. The tank has a piece of capillary matting in the bottom and I keep this wet so moisture can be drawn into the plant pots. A plastic lid is on the tank to keep the humidity up but there are holes so any bugs can be attracted into the tank. They are doing well up to now but apparently you are classed as an "expert" if you can keep the alive over the winter :-), so we shall see what happens.

My plants in my small aqua nano shrimp tank are doing well, particularly the "Jungle Val". I removed about half of the red cherry shrimp from the tank and placed them into my tall shrimp tank. The reminder are doing well and there are some berried females so I am hopeful they will breed. I have covered the exit grill with foam to prevent small shrimp babies being drawn into the filter area. The 2 Amano shrimp also look well.

This is the 24" livebearer tank. The tank contains a selection livebearers from the Maidenhead aquatics "spares" tank, (were people bring surplus fish for resale). There are some guppies that look to be endler/guppy cross breed, some Wagtail platies, and some Temperate platies.  My 3 corydorus are also in there with a Siamese algae eater. All seem to be doing OK. I am using a large sponge airlift filter that is working well. The air pump is in the stand below the tank so the noise is kept to a minimum, Plants are fed with "easy" fertiliser once a week and 1 ml of "EasyCarb" liquid carbon each day.  I decorated the tank with a piece of driftwood and Dragon Stone, which I really like.

The Aqua One aquarium is still stable, it contains home bred Kribensis together with Cherry barb and 3 Ember Tetra. The Kribs enjoy the heavy planting with Cryptocorn plants as they can hide in the under growth. The tank is quite highly stocked but Aqua One tanks have a large rear filter area providing excellent water supply. The filter area contains multiple sponge filter medium and some of the Biohome ceramic media sold by Richard (The PondGuru). 

This is my second Shrimp tank. I have tried to achieve optimum conditions for the Cherry Shrimp to encourage breeding. Filtration is achieved with a " Hang on back" filter this also has a sponge fitted over the inlet tube and a pop sock stocking case fitted over this. The flow is good to the filter pump and the hose should prevent any baby shrimp being drawn into the filter. Temperature is maintained at about 24 C. There are 8 adult Cherry shrimp in the tank and I have spotted 5 baby ones. 3 of the adults are also "berried" (carrying eggs).

Close up of the Red Cherry Shrimp.

Growing pond Marginal plants in a dry garden - update

The use of planters to grow marginal plants has been sucessfull. Depite the weather being very variable so far this summer the plants have grown very well and put on some good growth.

Houttuynia cordata variegata - Orange Peel Pla

Iris pseudacorus - Yellow Flag Iris.

Equissetum - Mare Tail

Scirpus cernuus

Growing pond Marginal plants in a dry garden

There are times when you may want to grow a moisture loving plant in a normally dry garden. such as around the margins of a tub pond. This is my solution for doing so...

As you can see, these plastic pots do not have holes in the base although there are thin areas of plastic to enable the owner to make some. In my case I want the bottom third of the pot to retain moisture so I have made holes around the pot middle to hold this level of water below the holes.

This should provide a permanently damp substrate for moisture loving plants, such as pond marginals. Of course the pots will require watering but not as frequently as when the plants are growing in a free draining soil.

In this case, I have purchased a Sisyrinchium californicum from the nursery, it was planted in a marginal pond basket. As can be seen when I removed the plant from the basket it freely split into two separate clumps. These were planted into the pots giving them room to grow, They will make a nice display next to my tub pond.

Plant Label front.

Plant Label rear.

Invertebrate aquarium update.

This is a one month update of my invertebrate aquarium. I have been dosing with Easy-Life EasyCarbo each day and also used Easy-Life Profito fertiliser each week. 

The leaves of the plants were still quite yellow, so I have added some Easy-Life Ferro (iron) top-up to the aquarium as well. 

The plants are now starting to develop new growth. The Vallisneria spiralis in particular like the new conditions and there are now nine plantlets. I read the plant prefers hard water which is what my mains supply is. I have also added an established Rotala indica plant to the aquarium.

Flora Base Pro substrate - Invertebrate Aquarium

24th May 2017

I have added a litre of "Flora Base Pro" substrate to my invertebrate tank. It raised the substrate level by about 5-10 mm. The plants are more secure now.

I have started dosing with 1ml of Easy-carb and a couple of drops of Easy life Profito fertiliser. The plants are starting to look fresher so hopefully they will soon start to grow more. 

The Flora base is expensive, but seems to be a superb substrate product. There was virtually no clouding of the water and because the beads are small, they bedded well around the plant roots.

Plant growing advice

19th May 2017

Plant growing advice…

Jake at Romsey World of water store recommended this website for advice regarding aquarium plant growing…

http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/index.htm

It appears to be very useful.

Emmersed Plant growing

12th May 2017

These are my sickly looking Anubias plants. They are not happy in a tank so I thought I would try growing them emmersed. Apparently they will grow ok if you keep the humidity high while they get used to the move from underwater to an air environment. I will update again in a few weeks.

Update 2 Garden Water Feature

12th May 2017

My water feature filter is now working.

After a couple of issues, I have now managed to get my pool filter system up and running.

The main problem was that the power head pump was delivering too much water to the filter, causing it to overflow. The pump was a 500 litre per hour one, also the output regulator was missing. I found a 400 litre per hour one in my spares box that had a regulator and I substituted this one.

I also replaced the filter outlet hose with a 3/4″ hose and shortened it to be no longer than required. The level in the filter now seems to be stable so I will see if it performs OK.

I am using the filter as a mechanical filter, i.e. no bio or chemical components, as I have no fish in the pond.

Update 1 Garden Water Feature

12th May 2017

My homemade pond filter up and running supplying my garden water feature.

May 2017 Snapshot of Aquariums

8th May 2017

This is a snapshot of my indoor aquariums.

Blyxa Japonica

5/Feb/2016

I planted two nice stems of "Blyxa Japonica"  (Dwarf soft rush) in my AquaNano 40 tank. It looked very good initially, but didn't last more that a few weeks. I believe it requires a higher light level and probably CO2 injection.