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.

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The hard work is done, the paludarium is assembled, (though...

The hard work is done, the paludarium is assembled, (though there is one other piece of driftwood that goes in there, but the plate is in it’s place for now) and the upper part is planted. (though the plants are a bit ragged, they should recover though) Turns out, it holds about 7 gallons. not a lot, but it’s fine for some shrimp, a couple Dwarf African Frogs, and a Betta.  And astonishingly, a snail has ALREADY found it’s way in there. He’s crawling along the glass right now. He must have hitched a ride on the driftwood with the moss, that was on the old bowl. Just need to add the aquatic plants now, but I need a bit more aquarium gravel first, and a couple water changes to minimize the tannins from the soil before i add the plants. will get that done tomorrow.

The filter was causing be nothing but grief today. first it was taking on air, so  i had to seal the hose with silicone, then the output was being finicky and it is now a bizarre mishmash of bits of plastic to get it flowing to the right place, but i think it’s working now. Sadly, the heater did not fit in the hidden compartment like i wanted, so i will have to find a place for it in the tank itself, looking all ugly and unnatural :-/ That, or i get a smaller heater and save this one for something else.

I need to also figure out a way to raise the hood up by about 5 inches, but for now I can prop it up on a clamp at the one end, I can figure out the hood situation a bit later.

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