My attempt at a 90gal Tall Riparium

[Gooberfish]

Looking good so far!

[@marko@]

thats one big fish.
you could add some moss on rocks/wood, and as well as microsorum pteporus and anubias sp. in the tank as well. to make the underwater portion more interesting.
though i guess a giant fish (supposedly pretty intelligent as far as fish go too) does a good job of that on its own.

[MGap]

Yeah he's pretty massive and still growing. I wanted to add plants in the bottom but he doesn't like plants very much and redecorated as he sees fit. I have a few silk ones sitting ones around that I'm going to try to place in the tonight to give the underwater portion a little more and was thinking of planting some shorter crypts in the hopes that he will play with the tall ones and leave the shorter ones alone.
The catch is that this tank is super deep and I have trouble reaching the bottom so it needs to be super low maintenance. Since I vacuum his mess every day on the morning I'm trying to make it as easy to clean as possible. The silk ones are easy enough to grab and lift out while I clean then plop back in when I'm done since they're weighted with rocks. But I don't know that I want fake plants in there either so I'm gonna see how it looks.

[MGap]

Hello Hello,

So work and my magazine have kept me super busy, plus it seems everyone I know has decided to get married or have a birthday sometime from October to February. So before I enter Art Basel Madness here in the MIA, I figured Id give some updates and ask some questions.

These are the plants just as they were planted, the list of which I continuously forget to bring with me. So some I remember the names, some I dont. These first photos are from a few days after planting.

^ Here, the pilea shares a planter with the small palm thing whose name i cannot recall. My rafts took a little while to arrive, so my temporary solution had these two planted together.

^again right after planting. Here you can see there is a little bit of brown in the Leather fern, and one of the leaves snapped. Its been about 3 weeks though and the leaves on her are HUGE now and there are two new ones. Those photos ill post tonight as they are on my home computer.


^this is more recent, probably about a week old. I took some water lettuce from another tank to fill in the foreground, but the oscar has eaten ALL The roots on them and there are only 3 out of the 10 that I put in left alive.

Things seem to be growing in nicely. The pilea is HUGE and I ultimately used it and some lungwort to fill up the rest of the rafts. To my surprise, the lungwort actually grew really long roots faster than the pilea is, and is so far still doing well.

I do however thing there is a problem with the little palm plant, and I think it may be some sort of white fly. My Cat Palm and bell peppers also suffered recently and I think it is what killed my Areca a few months ago, and I see the leaves crinkling a bit the way white fly makes vegetable leaves mal formed. I will be posting some more photos of that tonight. Some of the leaves on that plant have dropped off and I found some weird whitish orange pulp type stuff between the "trunk" and the leaves. Im not sure what it is.

On a positive note, my anthurium is doing fantastic as is the Golden photos. It is sort of clinging to the glass and dropping down roots from random joints. Also, the tank is also now home to some shrimp. They came with the swords I had put in there that the oscar killed already. Ive since replaced it with silk plants.

Anyways, Ill get some more photos in a short while.

[hydrophyte]

Hey that's looking great! Nice job planting all that stuff.

[MGap]

Okay, so as I mentioned there are a few little issues that I am having in the tank and I'm trying to figure out what they are.

First of all, excuse me because I completely forgot to bring the list of names with me so Im not too sure what this one is called. But as you can see, the leaves on this little darling plant have sort of shriveled at the ends and are becoming slightly transparent and scrunched up.


Yesterday I went through and cleaned everything as best as I could, trimmed off the dead leaves and added some stuff but this is before the cleaning. Im not really sure whats causing it, it seems to be the only plant having this issue. Ive looked through to see if I can find any mites or anything but the most I saw was an ant (and those are all over my house anyways). Any help here would be much appreciated.

The second thing is with the Leather Fern. I know the tips get a little brown, but these are just extremely burnt. At first, I thought that maybe it was just damage suffered in shipping, but there is what it looked like last week:


I cut off the dead leaves during my clean-up yesterday. There are two new leaves in their place so she seems to be okay, Ill have to keep an eye on how she does.

So, here is the planted part of the tank the way it sits today:

Sorry for the crappy photo, I took it in a hurry today just to get a shot. I added two ghetto home made hanging planters that are hidden behind the existing trellis rafts. Each new planter contains two ribbon plant shoots. They really filled in the space.
Ill take some close up of the plant growth tonight.

Oh, and in case youre wondering, the oscar ate all the water lettuce.
All of it.

[hydrophyte]

This looks to me like mite damage. Do you have magnifying glass around that you can use for a closer inspection? I try to keep all fo the plants that I produce clean and bug-free, but using regular houseplants in a riparium can often introduce trouble.

Originally Posted by MGap

This just looks like some shipping/handling trauma to me. Leather fern doesn't usually have problems with insect pests. I would just let that plant grow a couple weeks more, then cut off this damaged leaf.

[MGap]

Originally Posted by hydrophyte

This looks to me like mite damage. Do you have magnifying glass around that you can use for a closer inspection? I try to keep all fo the plants that I produce clean and bug-free, but using regular houseplants in a riparium can often introduce trouble.

I looked through them and don't really see any mites. Having said that this is the only plant that is showing any signs of stress, so I dont really think it came with the mites, I think if anything they came from the water lettuce that the fish eventually ate up.

how do I treat it for mites anyways? I would rather be safe than sorry, plus I really like this little tree and don't want to lose it.


I actually cut off the burnt leaves from the fern and it seems to be doing well. I also repositioned the planters and rafts so that there was a more balanced feel to the tank. I had my bf send me a photo to post, but ill take some more later.

[hydrophyte]

That looks like a nice planted layout!

One remedy that you might try if you suspect insect pests is to just flood everything so that all of the plants, including the ones on the trellis rafts, are underwater overnight. If you repeat that two or three times over the course of a couple of weeks you can usually kill off problem bugs.

Just keep an eye on that Ruellia plant. Maybe it was just stressed from shipping. Did you add any kind of fertilizer tab to the planter cup? That plant will grow and bloom best with extra root ferts.

[_FC]

Did you find Bacopa? I have a ton of it i plan to sell...

[MGap]

Its been a while since I updated but I have some new photos!

First, A FTS:

Things are growing very well, and after the last move-around, I've not touched it.


These Are the left side of the tank:




The Golden Pothos is really loving this emersed set up. I've used 2 tiny suction cup hooks to hold some longer pieces of the pothos out of the water, but roots have formed from almost every joint and grow into the tank.
The anthurium on this side is also doing very well, and the leaves are big and green and there are 2 new ones since planting it. Both the Anthurium and the Pothos are actually doing better inside the tank than their donor plants are doing outside.

The Right Side of the Tank:





This side is actually my favorite. The giant cluster of lungworth and pilea on the very end is actually a trellis raft attached to the spath. The spath is growing beautifully with lots of new leaves, but remains relatively small.

The little bamboo looking plant whose name escapes me is probably the fastest grower in the bunch. Its become much taller in the last few weeks.

For those of you looking, I did end up lose that Ruella despite the soaking. Everything else made it out okay, but the Ruella ultimately lost all its leaves and then turned super dark.
I also recently ordered flourish tabs and will be fertilizing everything once that arrives.

I may be reaching out to Hydrophyte sometime next year for a couple more hangers, since I have 2 unused rafts Id like to attach to something. but, Overall im pretty happy with this little project tank.

[hydrophyte]

Hey that's looking great! I like the variety of plants that you put on the trellis raft.

[hydrophyte]

Any more updates for this tank?

[crazydaz]

Nice goon' MGap! It looks great! I would suggest some Alternanthera for,your rafts. They add a nice red-purple color....that's probably my favorite plant! I guess Hydrophyte is going to be adding additional varieties of riparium plants in a few weeks, too. You should have ample selection to choose from soon!