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The Muddled Puddle, a Wabi Kusa

hitmanx

hitmanx

Member
Joined
18 Oct 2014
Messages
303
Location
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
This is my first foray into the art of Wabi Kusa...

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For now it's mostly non aquatic plants that I have used in my riparium, but I will be attempting more traditional stems as it progresses... salvinia and lemna on the water surface...

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A slapped together of bunch of random driftwood with stainless screws, dumped some aquasoil on the bottom of an Ikea bowl and whipped up my own wabi kusa ball...

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The driftwood has been planted with Spiky moss at the waterline...

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The ball is made up of hydroton balls in the centre surrounded by 50/50 aquasoil and crushed sphagnum moss...

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Then wrapped in long fibre sphagnum and placed in a hair net and twirled tight...

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I'm using a Philips par30 LED daylight flood on a 12hr light period... I have been trying to change the water everyday for the first few weeks...

This should be fun!
 
Looks very nice.
 
Looking great, the challenge is low humidity (and aphids and cats) with emergant aquatic plants. Where do source your terrestrial plants?


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TBRO said:
Looking great, the challenge is low humidity (and aphids and cats) with emergant aquatic plants. Where do source your terrestrial plants?
Click to expand...

My riparium has been plagued by aphids for the last year or two which severely limits my use of stems above water... and humidity is 35 to 40% in the winter and don't have time for working about misting... that's not gonna happen... we shall see how things go...
 
Looking great, plants all seem healthy. Is there anything living in the water?


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The spiky moss is finally taking to the emersed culture and branching out all over...

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I've added more of the terrestrial moss to the driftwood... and I have tried to figure out what kind of moss it actually is... I'm thinking the branched moss in Hylocomium sp., and mounding moss is probably Pincushion Moss or Leucobryum glaucum, and perhaps the larger branched moss is perhaps Hedwigia sp. ...

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Unfortunately some of the chamedora palm has failed... I'm not sure it's suited to the wabi kusa... the pilea has begun to root well... The salvinia is taking over but some is moulding or turning brown...
 
This just looks so good, love it.
 
Ady34 said:
This just looks so good, love it.
Click to expand...

Thanks, it's a nice way to get into Wabi kusa... pretty easy when you don't have to worry too much about humidity... I was hoping the palm would do better but we shall see...

I have a couple ferns I am going to try in some more wabi kusa and a traditional saikei setup with moss...

And I'm setting up a small shallow tank that will use wabi kusa balls for emesed growth...

This is fun!!
 
I was able to go 10 days without a water change and the water was crystal clear and smelled wonderful... smelled green and fresh... the surface scum was gone... I removed half of the salvinia minima... it's growing gangbusters as are the moss.. . The pilea depressa isn't doing much but it's not dying.. the pilea glaucophylla is back budding and getting thick... the palm is just sitting there.. a few of them have died... I might have to try another large plant to grow out of the wabi ball... In my experience they often don't do much for a long while before they start actively growing...

I simply love this setup...

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Looking nice, it’s fascinating the transition area from underwater to emergant. I’m finding it’s real trial and error as to what will grow in these conditions. Hydrocotyle species seem to like it.


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I was thinkng of hydrocotyle sp Japan but it would probably take over quickly... the wabi kusa ball itself is a little boring right now... the pilea species are indeed growing but I just don't know what the Bella palm is doing... in my big riparium I had it sitting for a whole year before it sent out a healthy leaf...
 
H. Japan is a great filler and does well emersed. It's easy enough to trim; it usually puts out loads of vegetative growth before it takes root, so you don't necessarily have to worry about it being invasive.
 
Getting a little morning sun...

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I think I'm going to spread the pilea glaucophylla around the back of the wabi yo mix it up a bit... I collected a couple more species of terrestrial mosses to add to the setup in the next few days...

I'm not sure if I'm going to add the H. Japan to the wabi or around the driftwood if at all...
 
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