Mr. Aqua 17.5 Riparium

[mdreher]

So I decided to start a planted tank back in June. Since then I narrowed it down to a riparium. I know it's not much to look at now, but it's a start. I'm still waiting on my wood, but the plants got here first so I went ahead and planted them. Thanks alot Hydrophyte for the plants and planters!!! By the way I haven't had an aquarium in over 15 years so any and all suggestions are welcome. If you see something I'm doing wrong please tell me. I intend for the tank to be 2/3 full, but I didn't want to fill until I got my wood. Anyways...here we go. Thanks for looking!!

Aqualife 24" T5HO freshwater light
Eheim 2232 filter
Ion Brick gravel (from Hydrophyte)

[duff]

So excited to see new Riparium! Congrats on your new set up - Looks like its going to be a great. What style of wood will you be adding (branchy, straight, etc)? Fish/No fish? What made you decide Riparium over a full tank?

Welcome to the easy life of the Riparium so glad to have you aboard!

Duff

[mdreher]

Thanks for the warm welcome. I have a piece of manzanita coming in the mail. It's branchy and hopefully will fit. I may have to cut it some. I won't be adding any fish until January. I promised the wife I wouldn't fully start the aquarium until I finished school. I was also thinking about adding a couple of small river rocks.

Originally Posted by duff

So excited to see new Riparium! Congrats on your new set up - Looks like its going to be a great. What style of wood will you be adding (branchy, straight, etc)? Fish/No fish? What made you decide Riparium over a full tank?

Welcome to the easy life of the Riparium so glad to have you aboard!

Duff

[RipariumGuy]

Looks like you are off to a great start! I am definitely going to keep my eye on this one.

[hydrophyte]

That looks like a real good tank to use. Just give those plants some time and they should grow into some nice specimens for you.

As those aluminum plant start to grow you can chop the tops off just replant right into the trellis rafts. Do that a few times and you will have a nice midground hedge of aluminum plant.

I just sent a note about the white mangroves. It would be good for those to go into a planter.

I hope that the Pandanus will take off for you. That is one of the coolest plants. I had chopped to tops of those off because the nursery sent them really tall. As it starts to grow new leaves you can trim off those chopped leaves to get a nicer-looking plant. I think that plant will grow more compact in your tank because it had looked like they were growing it in the shade in the nursery and that was why it was tall and leggy.

The leather fern is one that tends to melt back after shipping. Give it a few days and you should see new little leaves sprouting up from the rhizome.

[mdreher]

I decided to go ahead and fill the tank 2/3 full so that I could start the filter and use the heater. The factory setting for the heater is 77 degress. Is that a pretty good temp to keep it at? I also went to the local nursery and picked up a few plants: pilea molis and hemigraphis alternata. I placed them both in rafts. The pilea seems to like it, but the hemigraphis is wilting pretty bad. Hopefully it will recover some. My wife has the camera, but when she gets home I'll post some more pics

[duff]

Looking forward to seeing the updated pictures! When I added my new plants some of them wilted a bit and caused me worry but in about 2 days they bounced right back. Give them a bit of time to settle in and they should be just fine. I have noticed that growth is pretty slow at this point as they all are putting down roots - its been about 2 months now and I am starting to see a lot more growth on most of the plants and I am finally able to see good roots in the planter cups.

[mdreher]

That's good to hear. I did notice with the hemigraphis alternata that it almost completly bounced back after I turned the heater on last night. Today after I got back from work I would say it made a full recovery. I didn't know temp played such a big part. Pretty cool. I'll take some pics tonight and post them.

On another note. I'm really impressed with the Eheim 2232 canister filter and the Fluval E series heater. The filter was super easy to set up and has silent operation. You can't even tell it's on. The heater is pretty sweet also. It has the temp displayed on the screen and if it's low it shines blue and it if's hot it's red. It's green when it's the desired temp. Cool

[mdreher]

So far it looks like things are doing pretty good. The Aluminum plant is finally starting to perk up and it looks like the leather fern may have some new growth. The pandanus tectorius has a few yellow spots on some of it's leaves. Is that normal or should I be concerned? Should I be adding anything extra to water and do I need to perform water changes. I don't have any fish yet. If anyone can think of anything that a newbie may be forgetting please let me know. Here's some updated pics:
Pandanus Tectorious with yellow spots

Possibley new growth on the leather fern

White mangrove seedlings

Cat palm and pilea molis

Purple waffle, and aluminum plant

[hydrophyte]

That's all looking pretty good so far. I wouldn't worry about the yellow spots on the Pandanus. I have seen that on my plants too and I don't think it is any real trouble.

Yep that definitely looks like a new little leaf emerging on the leather fern.

This will take some time + patience to get this to fill in, but you have some good plants starting out.

I wouldn't worry about ferts too much at this point. Do you plant to add fish pretty soon? If you have a good number of fish you won't need much fertilizer, although it might be handy to add something with iron from time to time.

[mdreher]

That's good news about the Pandanus. I was hoping it wasn't something I was doing. Should I cut off the dying stems on the leather fern once the new leaves come in?

I don't plan on adding any fish till the begginning of January. I was also thinking about adding some inverts too. One of these days my wood will get here and I'll be able to start adding to the underwater portion. Thanks for the advice.

[AzFishKid]

That Pilea molis looks cool! Where'd you get it?

[mdreher]

I picked that up along with the purple waffle at Pike Nursery here in Atlanta, but I saw some at Lowe's and Home Depot also. I'm not sure if they are the same type of pilea, but they looked similar. I just snipped off a couple of stems and planted them in the trellis raft and they took off. It's only been about 3 days and they already have roots forming. I'm not a plant expert, but that seemed pretty good to me.

[AzFishKid]

When you have some to spare we should totally do a trade. By then i might have some Pilea grandiflora that i could send your way if you're interested.

[mdreher]

Originally Posted by AzFishKid

When you have some to spare we should totally do a trade. By then i might have some Pilea grandiflora that i could send your way if you're interested.

Sounds good to me. That stuff looks pretty cool. Guess we'll just have to play the waiting game now.