This has been a 'learning experience' *. I am still developing this and haven't scaped it properly yet. I have plants arriving from ProShrimp (I tried AG however most of the plants I wanted were out of stock
) so I took a punt on ProShrimp**. The ever helpful
@Steve Buce has supplied some buce - which look amazing. I have had a Dusk Moss Mix growing in containers for four months, it's just starting to develop and should be ready to put on in a month or so.
The first picture is of siliconing the Epiweb II in. It looks and feels like very stiff coarse filter material. Despite the negative comments on social media it's fairly easy to cut and the drip system provided by Marc worked well. He also provided a few offcuts which were particularly useful in forming planters.
I couldn't buy any scaping materials, however, used an old beech root (from a hedge that was grubbed up) which was boiled and scaped for 3 hours, a bit of driftwood found in a stream and piece of beech root used in my last scape. The base was lava rock and I put a piece on top of some of the wood to hold it in place and then decided to keep it place and use it as a growing medium. My principle in this was that much of the hardscape will be (hopefully) covered with plants in the very near future.
The space at the back of the tank will be planted and has a grow light. The idea behind this is to start to cover the back and sides of the tank with plants and to provide white spaces which shine through when you look through the paludarium. I was more interested in the negative space between the pieces and the shadows cast by the hardscape. If this makes any sense?
The soil substrate is Velda Lelite water lilly aquatic compost (blue loam with peat) mixed with John Innes Number 3, topped off with AquaGrowth Soil.
I put the terrestrial plants where they looked ok and where I think they will be ok...any advice welcome! I bought some small ones a few months back (before lockdown) from my local garden centre and grew them on, however, couldn't locate any other suitable plants.
The right hand side isn't finished yet and will be filled with a carved polystyrien piece covered in hygrolon.
The outflow needs attention, however, the system that I need to fit the pipework comes from the US and is out of stock atm so I jury rigged up something...
*Any advice or comments are very, very welcome
**yes I do feel guilty