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Surrey Summer

Yes my plan is to use ramshorns, but I am open to other suggestions.

No shrimp for several reasons. Firstly, I want to try and restrict the tank to all native species if I can. Secondly, that means I won't have a heater as UK plants/animals need cooler water. Finally, because the sticklebacks are voracious and will immediately eat them!
 
luckyjim said:
Yes my plan is to use ramshorns, but I am open to other suggestions.

No shrimp for several reasons. Firstly, I want to try and restrict the tank to all native species if I can. Secondly, that means I won't have a heater as UK plants/animals need cooler water. Finally, because the sticklebacks are voracious and will immediately eat them!
Click to expand...

Ah I see, that would be why not :lol:
 
Thanks Edvet, good suggestion. I suspect the sticklebacks will nab them but worth a shot!

Since on the topic, I have been thinking about how I am actually going to feed them once they are in there. I don't have much room in my flat for a proper daphnia culture, and to be honest I'm not too keen on having worms cultures around the place (or rather, my flatmate wouldn't be too pleased).

I do however have a potential source of live food / natural inverts. My flat (and indeed the tank) looks over Regent's Canal just north of the City of London (near to the City Basin for those who know the area). My plan is to trap inverts from the canal. My idea was to use a simple bottle trap (i.e. a plastic water bottle with the top section cut off and reversed baited with food scraps. Hopefully I could haul this in every couple of days and remove any inverts/insects. Might need to purge them or toxins/pollutants somehow before adding to the tank? Maybe leave in clean dechlorinated water overnight?
 
I'm not sure if they are any good or whether they will be out enough to get eaten. But I have planeria (flatworm) in my windowsill tank. I'm sure they are munching on something.
 
I put together the basic hardscape this afternoon:

4ThfvjV.jpg


From the side late afternoon:

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Top shot showing layout:

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Water a bit cloudy from the sand.

Here is my thinking. The stones were placed on sections of polystyrene. Between, and in the back right section, I have built it up with black sand held in sections of nylon tights. And gaps were part filled in with sand. I will be putting aquasoil around (and partly over) the stones. I will plant the emergent flowering plants (not fully decided on which yet) at the back there. Hairgrass will go on the sloping bank and between the stones. There is also a section of plastic bottle at the front middle that will hold a large clump of hairgrass, and I will plant some strands in the sand around the rocks. There is a section at the left back that I have blocked out with plastic, more aquasoil will go here and the flowering rushes. I have decided to simplify things a bit and leave out the lily, which I think would have been tricky and does not quite fit in with the "feel" of the tank as it develops.

The filter is running, I put some media from my established tank to kick start the cycle.

Plants will be ordered online tomorrow, I haven't yet installed the hanging lighting though!

All thoughts and suggestions welcome.
 
Does anyone have any tips or advice on how to plant the following species? The only resource I can find is a book from 1910! (Which looks very interesting by the way).

Flowering rush, Butomus umbellatus (planned to go at the back on the left, where I have left a trench)
Lesser spearwort, Ranunculus flammula (planned to go back mid level)
Water forget-me-not, Myosotis scorpioides (planned to go at the top of the hill on the right)

At the moment, the plan is to just plant these in aquasoil, maybe with some root tabs for extra nutrients.
 
Oh god, I must have misread the maximum height!

I may have to rethink that one, and keep the ones I have ordered next to the tank in pots or something.

Luckily there are loads of other nice choices I can have a look at, will have to pay P&P again though.
 
It will be fine, give it a go :). It does seem to be a smaller rush after all, I bet Darrel knows more about it.
 
My first batch of plants arrived last Friday. I added my (pre-used from previous owner) aquasoil, and quickly planted them in. It did take a couple of water changes to clear the water from the aquasoil run-off and gunk.

The flowering rush came "barerooted" - essentially a piece of root with a few small shoots coming out. Over the course of the week it has already shot up, and the biggest shoot i now at least 6 inches above the waterline. The lesser spearwort was potted, so I rinsed off the majority of the compost and just plonked it into the aquasoil in its dedicated spot. It has also emerged above the waterline, albeit a bit more slowly and less dramatically. The forget-me-not blue also came potted so I followed the same procedure. I was slightly more worried about this one as I am pushing the maximum depth it can be planted at. However, in the last few days it is showing new shoots/leaves at the surface. I suspect of all the plants so far this is the one that might struggle. The eleocharis I tried to plant in as small clumps as I could manage, with a few larger clumps in strategic spots.

I also added two large ramshorn snails on Saturday, in anticipation of inevitable algae. They seem happy as there are already two egg cases. Pleased about that as I think I will need all the algae eaters I can get in the future.

However, I have not seen any real sign of algae yet. There is a tiny bit of what looks like BGA, which came in with the hairgrass. I will mnually remove this. The ADA 601 LED is suspended about 2 feet above the tank. I have had it on for 4 hours during the middle of the day. But the tank gets plenty of natural (mainly largely indirect) sunlight. The CO2 is dialled up to keep the drop checker solution very pale green, bordering on yellow, 24/7 at the moment.

I am going to trim the hairgrass down tonight, to encourage carpeting. My second batch of plants should be arriving tomorrow. I've gone for some "flying hedgehog" (Juncus ensifolius) which is "dwarf rush" that I like the look of, and will hopefully provide some contrast with the leafier emergent plants. Also some lesser water plantain, which looks to have pretty little flowers. finally a few top-up pots of eleocharis as I was a bit stingy on the first order.

All of these plants are mercifully cheap by the way, a couple of quid each a pot online.

Anyway, thanks for reading, here are some shots of the tank as it stands. Apologies for the phone-camera quality of shots. Its also quite tricky getting pictures against the sunlight!

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dO5Hiac.jpg
 
What a cracking idea luckyjim. If you went for a lowered water level you could use an exo-terra ultra-sonic misting unit to come on for short period of time to keep all the out of water plants damp. I have used this technique on frog tanks in the past, it also looks cool. here is a link to a demo of the exo-terra waterfall and fogger:

i only used the top part of the waterfall with fogger built into the scape (sorry no pics as i lost them when the laptop went blue screen of death!!!)
Jim
 
Thanks Jim and everyone for your comments. I did have a think about the emersed plants' leaves but I am hoping that, given they are UK native marginal plants, they should be pretty hardy in regards to humidity. I plan to give them a spray every now and then to simulate the odd rain shower, and maybe give leaves a wipe to make sure they don't get clogged up with dust or residue from the spray (bloody London water!).

Forgot to add, I plan to build and set my bottle trap in the canal this weekend to see what critters I can get hold of. I think I will probably let anything I do catch sit in some clean water for 24 hours before adding it to the tank though, hopefully that should purge them of any toxins/pollutants? The Regents Canal in the centre of London, whilst not horrendous, is not exactly the most pristine environment.
 
The second batch of plants have arrived, and I have put them in.

Gave the hairgrass a good trim. If it gets direct sunlight it fizzes away so hopefully it will carpet relatively quickly. CO2 is now at full yellow; I finished the hardware by adding an UP inline atomiser. That replaces the bazooka in-tank atomiser, which seemed to be fine, but not as effective and it was getting in the way of planting space on the right. The flowering rush seems to have slowed down following its initial growth spurt.

I was worried that a high CO2 level might kill the ramshorns, but they seem to be fine. We will see what happens if I get some critters from the canal this weekend. To be honest I have no idea whether the tank is cycled or not. I have some pretty ropey test strips which might indicate how it is getting on. But I suspect there is quite high ammonia in there due to the aquasoil.

My battle with algae commences, there was a noticable layer of what looked like green spot algae on the front and left glass. That is definitely where the flow is weakest, and of it is un-planted. I cleaned it off and did a 60-70% water change.

It is all looking a little messy close up, so in the meantime here are some context pics to indicate how much natural light it will be getting, taken early evening, fairly overcast.

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My high-tech nano is on the left. This is the tank's view out of the window:

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Fast growing hornwort would help with the algae as would duckweed. Sticklebacks will get the insects though. Can I ask is this a one off 'this summer' only project? Because if I'm not mistaken most of those plants will need very cold dormant periods. Unless there is a way round that.
 
Yes I plan to run this through till September or so, as that is when I am due to move.

I think you are right about the inverts. I am hoping that they will be able to hide in the hairgrass and stalks of the emergent plants. But I suspect I will need to restock pretty regularly. Thankfully, should my bottle trap work, they should be free.

I might look into UK native floating plants other than duckweed if I am losing the battle against algae.

I guess we will have to wait and see. The whole tank is an experiment really!
 
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