NEW: 30gallon tall riparium

[Gooberfish]

It's pretty difficult to get good pictures in the day time. It sits close to the ground of our "sun room" of my house.This is a daytime picture of the anubias barteri, crypt tropica, brazilian sword, sweet flag, spathiphylum golden glow, and java fern wendelov. The anubias flowered for a couple of days!





The crypt tropica and the brazilian are sharing a hanging planter. May the best plant win. Also the hypoestes on the far right is no longer in there. I'll take more pics tonight.

[Gooberfish]

at around 1:45pm PT, lots of natural sunlight blasts the side of the riparium. I know it's a huge sin to let that happen but it looks darn good with natural sunlight hitting the sand, plants, fish etc. Ignore the reflections of the furniture.

[hydrophyte]

Hey those new plants look good. You should keep the top covered up pretty tight to maintain humidity for the crypts, Anubias and Java fern.

A little sunlight won't hurt anything.

[Gooberfish]

Originally Posted by hydrophyte

Hey those new plants look good. You should keep the top covered up pretty tight to maintain humidity for the crypts, Anubias and Java fern.

A little sunlight won't hurt anything.

Thanks! Ya I keep the lid on but sometimes I leave it cracked when there's company or when I just want to look at the whole thing without the wet glass.

[Davelybob]

The spath probably didn't out compete the hypoestes, that's just what hypoestes does. It's a pretty plant that turns ugly pretty quickly. I usually end up buying it because my wife is like "ooh pretty" so I get it for her so she doesn't complain about all the other houseplants I am buying for myself, then quietly toss it out once it's looking like crap and she's not paying attention. I got suckered into picking one up this summer, and when it started looking bad I threw a bunch of cuttings into my newly constructed DIY riparium hangers, and I gotta say that I like it much much better there than I ever did growing in a pot. Still a pain in the butt though.

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[Hidden Walrus]

Your tank is looking really neat. I'm trying to do a similar but simpler setup with some plants just growing out of my filters and some vines in the water, and it's coming along well, but my tank is smaller and has little supplementary lighting outside of a nearby window so my options are limited.

Also, for me I find hypoestes does really well outdoors but dies almost instantly inside. I had some that grew a few feet tall this summer and even bloomed in mixed planters with some other flowers in the shade of an apple tree, but toward the end of summer they got a bit leggy and the frost did them in last night. They're good annual flowers, but poor houseplants.

[MGap]

Look so nice. I love it.

[Gooberfish]

More updated cell phone pics:



^my evil face


^slowly winning the war on BGA



I changed the lighting to an odyssea 20" T5HO fixture. 2 18W bulbs, one 6500K 1 Plant bulb. It's got a more pinkish hue which really brings out the reds in the Dracaena and cherry barbs and intensifies the greens of the Spathiphylums more. I looked at Hoppy's chart for this fixture and calculated how far above the substrate the light is, and it's less than 40, so I'm still low tech.

The crypt tropica in the planter on the far left is losing the fight with the Brazillian Sword. I may have to make a move later this month. There's also some open raft real estate in front of the Dracaena...

[Sethjohnson30]

This is looking great! Keep it up.


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[hydrophyte]

Looking good!

Just last week I started refurbishing of the 55G high-humidity riparium setup with emersed crypts and other stuff. I hope to post some pictures soon. That C. wendtii 'Tropica' is an especially nice emersed riparium plant.

[Gooberfish]

Happy New Year everyone!


SO: The big Spathiphylum was removed. It had outgrown the pot, and so I put it in an indoor houseplant pot and it now sits next to the Riparium.

The combo Crypt Tropica & Brazillian sword had a verdict. The Brazillian sword was winning that competition so I split them up, but the sword where the old Spath was and now both can flourish in their own individual hanging planters.

All the other plants show good growth and improvement.








BAD NEWS: Yesterday I found ALL of the Cherry Barbs & otos dead. The water had dropped to 55 degrees. That was at 1:45pm I have to believe it got down colder than that in the morning or night before. My dad and I are devastated.We will now keep 2 heaters in the tank from now on during the cold months. Losing that many fish at once is never fun.