Jungle Fan

Also, for those who are interested in any aspects of aquatic plants, growing them, multiplying them, plants for specific types of aquaria, aquascaping in general, Amano style methods, etc. the Aquatic Gardeners Association and its journals, and archive are chock full of info, to include Wabi Kusa. https://www.aquatic-gardeners.org/ https://www.youtube.com/user/AquaticGardeners In light of full disclosure: Shameless plug by a member of the Aquatic Gardeners Association but without compensation🙂.

I used to use Wabi Kusa several years ago in my Amano style tanks, I used them for moss and other ground covers and sometimes at the water surface of open tanks to place moss and emersed growing plants like Anubias, or Hygrophila pinnatifida on, or in driftwood. Here are two articles on it from Aquasabi from Germany, and Studio Aquatica: https://www.aquasabi.com/aquascaping-wiki_aquascaping_wabi-kusa https://www.studioaquatica.com/blog/2019/11/4/integrating-wabi-kusa-into-the-aquascape Just for clarification though, when I used them it was just the soil balls, no glass bowls were involved in the process. PS: I also used to include one, or two root tabs in the soil balls depending on size.

I stopped setting up my deck ponds when I realized that herons in our area found that no snack was too small, or beneath them and that netting over tubs was no obstacle to them with their beaks. Herons I had to get up early to take pictures of and hike to see in the park, some of which were very elusive among them green herons, black crowned night herons, and great blue herons would come to my backyard for a quick snack and go. Had I been willing to offer up my precious finned friends as bait I could've saved myself a lot of mosquito bites and hiking, alas I'm not in a habit of selling out friends so the deck ponds disappeared, and off to the park I go.

Funny how we all use the same language but it means different things to different people, I too learnt what way back then was referred to as programming in Basic, some Pascal, and Cobol, haven't used it much since. In another life as a nurse your first and foremost concern was to keep your patients from coding, the worst of which was Code Blue meaning the patient was apneic (without breath) and pulseless, it also meant a team of us would come barreling down the hallway pushing what was referred to as a crash cart with a defibrillator, and appropriate meds. I know intuitively that "coding" on this forum would not refer to that kind of coding, yet for a split second my brain went to that subject first. Just goes to show how strongly, and deeply a trained physical emergency routine can be buried in our brains, and weird when it really sinks in and you realize you got conditioned by your work.

Bolivian rams, and I would of course (if you look at the link to my tank in the signature you'll understand why some will laugh right about now😄) add some cardinal, and some rummynose, or green neon tetras.

More like aquarium jesters.

Looks like shrimp Uber to me.

Here's a link to some 24" planting tongs I've been using in the past for really deep tanks on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/OdontoMed2011-Stainless-Curved-Tweezer-Plants/dp/B07QXKG4GB

After spending some time in Greece I brought home the recipe for Greek Pizza: Flatbread pizza with a Marinara style sauce, red onion rings cut very thin, crumbled Feta cheese, pitted and sliced Kalamata olives, thin sliced cooked ham, pepperoncini if you like them, sprinkled with a mix of oregano, thyme, sea salt, granulated garlic, and black pepper, followed by some olive oil, and some red wine vinegar, then baked. As the Greeks say, Opa! (and we're not talking the German word for grandpa here)

When I studied in West Berlin I shared a kitchen in the student dormitory with a Chinese-Indonesian, a Frenchman, a Polish guy, and three Italians from Napoli, Tuscanny, and Sicily, learnt how to cook French, Indonesian, and Italian food and the arguments over Sicilian vs. Napolitan pizza were epic, and wildly gesticulated, by the time the flamed crepes were ready for dessert generally though all ruffled feathers were smoothed and the Chianti was flowing freely.

Like @Patrick_G said you can move them lower, or you can provide some shade through stem plants, or a piece of driftwood. I have a Bucephalandra in my 75 gallon tank that wasn't doing so well until I moved it to a place where it was partially shaded by moss and driftwood and it's now growing like crazy.

For Ludwigia repens light is the deciding factor, although providing the plant with the correct ferilization which includes iron for the plant to be healthy is also important, as is CO2, it definitely helps, but you can have really red Ludwigia without the added CO2 as long as the light is high enough and the fertilization correct.

Here's a short article for you you might find informative from Tannin Aquatics which is a great source also for botanicals past Catappa leaves and Alder cones they also have some of the rarer seed pots from South America, and India for a more authentic look in your blackwater tank. https://tanninaquatics.com/blogs/the-tint-1/that-ph-thing-again?_pos=1&_sid=c41dbfabf&_ss=r

@BetsyWhen my wife and I bought this house the garden was just sandy prairie with rocks and weeds, some Cholla and Prickly Pear Cactus, a few clumps of Penstemon, but the builder was just going to put in more small rocks, I removed the big rocks little by little, except a few I kept for looks, added some top soil and planted the hummingbird and butterfly garden and our garden is about 15 degrees cooler during the summer than our neighbors' who are baking in the sun. As a young man before I went to college I had worked for a landscaping company for a while that built Japanese gardens, with koi ponds, and tea houses, and trained actual trees with rope and stone weights to look like bonsai. It sounds nice but was back breaking work, however I learnt, a lot from the horticulturist who owned the company. Now that gardening for the most part does not entail working with pick axes, I enjoy it a lot more, although now and then my back still protests. If you want to attract hummers I recommend Bee Balm, Penstemon, Anise Hyssop, Agastache, Hummingbird Carpet, and if you have space for climbers, Honeysuckle, and Red Trumpet Vine. With those plants you are pretty much guaranteed to get lots of shiny feathered visitors

@Streetwiseno disrespect intended! For the most part of my 53 years that I've been keeping fish now my budget was very limited and modest. I've had some larger tanks as well but not for the first 25 years of it. The multiple pieces of driftwood in my current tank that I combined into two bigger stumps, were collected over a period of about twenty years as one-sies, and two-sies whenever I visited a nice fish store with a good selection. Anywhere from $10 to $35, more would've been a deal breaker back then. I've still got a large box of wood in my garage with enough small pieces to build several more stumps with caves. I've also got several piles of rocks suitable for aquariums that I've collected on my travels in my garden. My wife refers to it as my pebble stash. By the way your tanks are beautiful and illustrate quite well how it isn't the budget that that makes a beautiful tank but how much time in studying, planning, passion, and maintenance one is willing to invest. Even the substrate was acquired over a longer drawn out period. In this hobby dreams are abundant but their reaiization in my experience always takes time, for me it was 53 years to get the tank I dreamed of as a boy who was mesmerized by cardinal tetras in the pet section of a department store.

Greetings to Colorado from Colorado! Nice tanks!

@Streetwise I think they are more mellow with the other tank mates, and each other because of my heavy planted mini jungle, and because I have created at least 6 different caves for them in and under the driftwood stumps. As for friends with me I think it might be more of a case of Pavlov's Rams, but they might know I don't pose harm to them as they do seem to associate me with food.

We've got several hummers living in our backyard again now, also included a picture of my "outside angelfish" from Talavera Mexico LOL.The Hummingbird Carpet is still just coming in but with the Bee Balm, Red Birds in a Tree, Trumpet Vine, Larkspur, Anise Hyssop and Lilies it's a full time job for the hummers.

Looks like you're well on your way. Nice tank.

My Bolivian rams are that way, they then jockey for positions in the area where I normally drop their sinking pellets. They even hang around if I remove a leaf in their proximity by hand.

I don't know if I'd chance it with a fish with one inch length at maturity with the Boesemani rainbows which can be right around 4.5". Even if they do get along, in a heavily planted aquarium you still run the chance that you might possibly only get to see the celestial pearl danios at feeding time and they hide the rest of the time in the plants. Then again they could surprise you.

If you are doing regular maintenance, as you mentioned. squeezing the sponge out in old tank water when you do your water changes, and you've got a routine in regards to feeding, fertilization, and light that doesn't produce big algae problems in itself then I wouldn't sweat it. Your sponge should have a good colony of beneficial bacteria established. If you've got surface film you can always do what I do and run a surface skimmer which I clean daily for one thing to avoid clogging, and to spring shrimp that seem to see a ride in the surface skimmer as the biggest thrill of all out of confinement. Once you've got the tank completely cycled you can always add some Nerite snails, unless you don't like them, or their eggs, or otocinclus to help with some of the minor algae that can occur during cycling. Regular maintenance, and daily observation however are key to preventing algae. Oh, and don't get frazzled when a bit of algae occurs, I don't think I've ever seen a tank completely without algae, not even by well known aquascapers unless they are just set up and uncycled; algae happens! Nice looking tank, and you seem to be well on your way.

Gruezi, or bon jour, depending on where you live in Switzerland, and welcome to the forum!

I'm kind of unusual now with my 75 gallon tank since I've had much larger tanks before and scaled back for ease of management but the general consensus usually seems to be "We're gonna need a larger tank!"😄

Quite different from the stinky face they can make! It just exudes enjoyment and contentment, almost like a smile.They are very sensitive to smell, funniest thing is when he uses the litterbox and seconds later you hear litter being flung, and next thing you know a cat shoots past you in the living room like a bat out of hell as if he's trying to get away from his own smell.