Paludarium update photos… with cat for scale… it’s...

Paludarium update photos… with cat for scale… it’s finished, basically, but the plants are still scraggly and no critters yet aside from accidental ones, snails and assorted water bugs. Still cycling. also, the water is still a bit brown from tannins, but oh man, it’s nothing compared to a week ago, hah, you could barely see anything in there, it was like I’d filled it with tea.

It remains very difficult to photograph, and I obviously suck at cleaning glass. The crypts and Pogostemon suffered some melting, but they are both showing signs of new growth so they ought to recover, and with crypts, that’s just something you have to expect anyway. You can see some yellow crypt leaves in the tank, I’m leaving them there for now to provide ammonia for cycling. I experienced some fungus on the wood, again fairly common, but the beforementioned accidental critters seem to be making short work of it now, and I think the moss is beginning to attach itself. The Anubias was , once i got it out of it’s pot, a tiny little bit of rhizome so i was hard to tie on in a pleasing way, but hopefully with time it will correct itself.  The soil in the pot is damper than I expected, but the plants seem happy, aside from one which could not handle it an I had to remove, so the back corner is empty. If it turns out some more can’t handle it I may actually just take some crypts and plant them in there, it may just be damp enough for them. I have some Creeping Jenny in there, which can actually be used as an underwater plant, so it ought to be fine at the very least. So it’s a bit scraggly right now after the melt and the terrestrial plants just getting started (and the African Violet suffered a lot of broken leaves)

Give it a couple weeks and I should be ready to add the first (intentional) critters. I’m of two minds on them. A pair of Dwarf African Frogs and a handful of cherry shrimp are a given, this is a great tank for frogs because the water is shallow and there is plenty of cover for both them and the shrimp, so it’s good for them. After that, I can’t decide between 2-3 Croaking Goramis (they make noise! singing fish!) OR a Betta (purple, to match the flowers, and I am hoping for a halfmoon) plus one or two Bumblebee Gobies. I will have to think on it.

Imported from Tumblr: http://ift.tt/1LkorzE