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Thanks for the encouraging comments Troi and flygja. The anti-algae measures were just enough to stop the whole tank clogging up. Without using chemicals, this is about as good as you can hope for with 30C+ temperatures and direct sunlight, I think. The Kribensis enjoyed this gloomy...

I loved the view from my room in early June, but there was no doubt it was still going green. A month later, the floating plants were doing well and the "green curtain" of morning glory and bitter gourds were providing good cover growing from pots next to the tank. I also stuck a sheet of...

The power of the shoots to force their way up through the Amazonia Akadama mix was amazing to watch. It took quite a strong push with my finger to get fertilizer pellets down through it! All sorts of anaerobic/aerobic(?) gaseous stuff going on here on the full sunlight side of the aquarium...

With just the one lotus left, a bit of rough landscaping could be done. Please remember this photo - it is the closest this setup came to the perfect planted aquariums on UKAPS! Note the attempt at growing an emersed plant in a coconut fibre pot in the left hand corner. It didn't do well, so...

Hello again all, I've been enjoying the ups and downs of this project since my first post and have been keeping a photo record. However, posting the photos has not been my strong point - to put it mildly! Anyway, here they are: This photo was taken on 7th April, just 10 days after the last...

I ordered 3 kinds of lotus from a farm in southern Japan back in February, for delivery once they had started shooting. They were delivered last week. The left hand (light pink) one is a small variety and is the one I plan to use in the aquarium. It should grow to a height of about 70cm. The...

I'm using a mix of Amazonia and akadama again, but this time I've mixed 10% leaf mould into the right side because it is sometimes included in soil mixes in lotus pots. Presumably this will alter the ph, so I'll have to test before adding fish.

New for this season: I've added CO2 - the price of the little 64g bottles went up here, so I invested in a 5kg Sapporo beer one, which should last a good while. As I want to go tropical from the start this time, I've also added a heater to stop the night time temperature falling below 20C in...

Following on from my balcony rice project last year, this time I'm going to have a go at making a planted aquarium based around a lotus plant. The layout will be something like in the diagram below. The lotus will dominate the deep soil area on the right with some shade tolerant plants...

Really enjoyed this.

Some locals hang up the rice to dry for a while, so I did the same. Farmers using a threshing machine. Traditionally paddy fields remained flooded even at harvest, but in modern methods the fields are dried out to allow mechanical harvesting. My set up remained wet. Separating the grains...

When the day arrived, a combine harvester was not required! Aquarium stubble

Thanks for the plant name Whitey89, from looking at pictures on the internet, I'm sure you are right with "Pogostemon Erectus". My LFS is good at labeling plants with scientific names, I just didn't take notes when I bought this because I wasn't planning to do a journal at the time.

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 6) Grains developing September The plant on the near left was a cutting from my indoor tank and it was interesting to see the difference in development under different conditions. Top view of the same plant just emerging from the water. And the same...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 5) Boiled shrimp? The "green curtain" did provide just enough shade to stop temperatures going even higher, despite taking a battering in the typhoon. Apart from two shrimp, everything else survived the heat. Although not ideal, I guess medaka and rosy...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 5) Boiled shrimp anyon With daytime highs over 30C continuously in August and water temperatures likely to reach 35C+ with direct sunlight, the survival of this setup was always in doubt. This was typical for mid-afternoon temperatures! However, the aim...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 4) Flowers Sunshine. Rice growing.

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 4) Flowers July: Interesting flowers on "boring" plants. Canadian pondweed (Elodea canadensis) is without doubt the most ubiquitous of freshwater plants sold in aquarium shops, but this setup reminded me once again of how ingenious and pretty the flowers...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 3) Planted! Thanks for the encouraging comments Matty1983, bizbaz, darren636, and D1gg3r. I live just into the countryside on the edge of the greater Tokyo urban sprawl. Yokohama is 20km to the east and Mount Fuji is 60km to the west. At this stage, I...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 2) Mount Fuji in the distance provides a nice background for the rice tank. The rice survived the typhoon, but the "green curtain" took quite a battering and never really recovered to give the amount of shade I had hoped for. Some more emersed plants of...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 2) June: Rice seedlings arrived on the bullet train from northern Japan thanks to a colleague of my wife. Oryza sativa, variety Hitomebore. What I received was a clump of the seedlings that farmers leave at the edge of fields to fill in spaces missed by...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 2) By the third week of May the deep section was coming on. Now what I needed was rice seedlings for the other side.

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 2) Top view. The non-aquatic plants in the tub are climbers that should provide some shade and keep the water temperatures down a little.

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 2) Unresolved issue: I wanted to hide the perspex divider with some emersed plants. I got an ADA mix designed for a circular glass bowl and split it up. The red stemmed plant grew well from the start, but the round leaved one (coinwort - Cenetella...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 2) And golden medaka (Oryzias latipes) which should be at home in a rice field setup.

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy (Part 2) By the end of April things had warmed up enough (lows 18C+; highs around 25C) for the plants to start growing and fish to be added. I chose Rosy Bitterling (Rhodeus ocellatus ocellatus) which are the Taiwanese variety, rather than the native Japanese one.

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy Going green! One month on (April 23rd; water 12C a.m/15C p.m.) and the original plants have died back and there's a nice layer of algae on everything. Algae is only ever a negative thing on ukaps, but at this stage of this project I don't think it's a bad...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy Thanks for the first comment on here, nayr88. The inspiration for this project came from spending my younger years exploring ponds in Gloucestershire and then seeing the wonderful lush paddy fields in Japan and imagining what they must have been like before the...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy The substrate is Amazonia and middle-sized akadama Water added (end of March). Water temperature still well below 10C all day, so just Elodea canadensis and cabomba for now and I don't expect those to grow yet. The next morning the water had cleared...

Re: Japanese Balcony Rice Paddy I wanted to create the feel of a paddy field and adjacent irrigation channel before the days of chemicals, but it wasn't going to be a strict biotope. The first thing to do was to make a perspex divider to separate the shallow rice area from deeper irrigation...

The aim of this project was to have an unheated tank on a south facing balcony and gradually introduce warmer water species as the year progressed. The essential ingredient of rice seedlings was to be added in June if obtainable. I've been keeping notes, but only got round to posting now it is...

I agree, Mario. Going to the trouble to get a tank looking this good and not enjoying it for a little longer does seem a shame. What will take its place?