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The Celestial Swamp - A voyage through a flooded forest fringe (Shallow Riparium)

"Twinkle" the Ancistrus sp. has come out to inspect the filthy crypts...

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Everything about this tank has been a roller coaster... from the flora and fauna additions to their eventual demise, the fact that some times I am obsessed with it and other times I completely ignore it, to ebb and flow of different algae or deficiency problems...

I have smaller nano tanks that I do far less work on and they just exist with no problems.... I'm really not sure what makes this tank so inconsistent...

I flooded this tank 1862 days ago and the only thing that has stayed the same is the ficus pumila chugging along on the right stump...

I just went over and reread this journal starting around 2018 and there have been so many changes... most I have forgotten about... but I wanted to thank everyone that has contributed to the discussion and encouraged me to continue 😍
 
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I wanted to do a species spotlight on the Ardisia humilus I tried awhile back... it grew fantastically, but is prone to aphids and back then I had an aphid infestation... since then I removed the Syngoniums and frogbit and placed the Ardisia "temporarily" in a bowl with water in an basement bathroom with no window and mostly darkness... well I forgot about it for a long time... months... and it kept growing... I haven't seen an aphid in ages so I've placed it back in the riparium and it's growing well. 😎

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It's a mighty fine riparium plant and I will be using it in further tank builds. It's also apparently bomb proof, unless of course you have aphids 🤮

Also I wanted show what the flowers look like on the Chamaedorea elegans that's growing massive in the back...

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I think might try adding in some Syngoniums again... the bright colour is appealing and I can just hope that aphids don't come back... I'm pretty sure they came in with some plant I added years ago...
 
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This is an awesome tank. Do all the emersed plants have their roots underwater? Do you have a master list of the plants you currently have emersed as I could do with some ideas for my next tank? The little little ivy type plant on the bottom right look great in particular!
 
Flora (Feb 2022)

Bellow:

Hygrophila polysperma
Hygrophila angustifolia
Heteranthera Zosterifolia
Sagittaria subulata
Microsorum pteropus 'Trident'
Cryptocoryne walkeri ‘lutea’
Cryptocoryne parva
Cryptocoryne wendtii (green, brown, tropica)

Above:

Spathiphyllum 'Petite'
Calathea lancifolia
Calathea rufibarba
Chamaedorea cataractarum
Chamaedorea elegans
Ficus pumila
Anthurium sp.
Ardisia sp.

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Ahhh, you're writing about aphids, my no.1 enemy!! What do you attack yours with? Mine have been decimating my emergent plants and it's VERY ANNOYING, they seem hard to kill too but I'm starting to think I need to go on a proper offensive.
 
Aphids are like a zombie apocalypse.... nuke everything... I collected them daily and fed them to the fish, but that novelty wore off quickly...

I ended up taking out and destroying any plants they like to munch on, which left only the Spathiphyllum, Calatheas, Ficus pumila and Anthuriums... they loved the Syngoniums, Ardisia, frogbit and any aquatic plants that grew emersed... they even like the new growth on the fern but there was a jumping spider living on that...

My suggestion is to drown all plants in water for 24hrs before bringing them anywhere near your tank...
 
hitmanx said:
Aphids are like a zombie apocalypse.... nuke everything... I collected them daily and fed them to the fish, but that novelty wore off quickly...

I ended up taking out and destroying any plants they like to munch on, which left only the Spathiphyllum, Calatheas, Ficus pumila and Anthuriums... they loved the Syngoniums, Ardisia, frogbit and any aquatic plants that grew emersed... they even like the new growth on the fern but there was a jumping spider living on that...

My suggestion is to drown all plants in water for 24hrs before bringing them anywhere near your tank...
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I think you are right, I'll do a proper clean and dipping of everything for 2 days. Most of my plants are emergents that grow out from the tank and it looks amazing when they're healthy, and then the vampires appear and suck it all dry in days 😤 they're quite fragile plants annoyingly, with lots of underbits for the aphids to hide in.

hitmanx said:
I do regret destroying the Syngoniums... but I even flooded them in a water bucket for 48hrs and they still came back... eggs maybe?
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Probably eggs, maybe a 1-2 dip a week apart. Or dip with SB-invigorator, maybe that would help.

Hufsa said:
Do you guys know about the CO2 method? Apparently you just seal em up in there with the plants and then gas the everliving daylights out of the sealed area with a CO2 system. Is apparently very effective at killing the aphids and wont harm the plants
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This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how I could seal the above bit and not have the co2 escape. 🤔
 
hitmanx said:
I actually caught some ladybugs and released them on the plants... every one of them flew away to die somewhere 🐞
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It’s the larvae you need not the adults. You should be able to collect them yourself in the Spring if you search hard enough, and don’t want to buy them - I often seen them on brambles and the like out walking:

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They do pupate, so you could wait for that stage before collecting them up and putting them outside somehow.

I’ve not done it myself as I say, but it would be an interesting approach and could deal with the problem.
 
Hi all,
Wookii said:
this might not be practical indoors,
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I get <"Aphidius spp."> parasitise the <"aphids on the house plants"> and in the glasshouse, but aphid (and White-fly) numbers usually build up in the winter before <"Lotka-Volterra"> dynamics kick in as the weather warms up. Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) is the plant that always has aphids in our house.

Some "outside time" in the warmer weather helps, but a lot more difficult for riparium set-ups.

cheers Darrel
 
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I noticed that there has been alot of discussion about lean dosing and substrate fertilization lately... I'm trying to think back if there was any positive or negative effects when I used Osmocote tabs a few times in this tank... I really don't know... if there was it's was very slow...

I specifically chose safe-t-sorb and aquasoil Malaya substrate because of its cation exchange capacity, but I don't really know how that has panned out for nutrient availability... the question is have the calcium and magnesium in the hard water I started with "filled" it up or maybe the emersed plants have soaked up any excess nutrients before it could even get to the soil?

Either way the dwarf sag is looking as sad as it did back in early 2019 before I used osmocote tabs the last time... I'm pretty sure it helped with those during 2019...

Edit: I just checked back to Sep 2019 and I said that I was going to add Osmocote tabs more regularly.... I in fact did not 🤪

I believe the phrase Consistency Deficiency is apt....
 
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