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Emersed Tub Journal: WEEKS 1-5

3K views 48 replies 6 participants last post by  Shrimpo_Brian 
#1 · (Edited)
Okay, so this thread is just going to be about my newly started emersed tub and it's progress as times goes by. Special thanks to Aulonacara_Freak for the emersed tub how to, which has inspired me to do one similar to it. The large tub and the ones in it all came from Office Depot. Any suggestions/comments/advice/questions/etc. on the setup is appreciated. Thanks for stopping by!

Here is a pic of the setup as of today, it's only been 2 days, and I think I see some emersed growth already!
Edit: the water part is home to some water lettuce, salvinia minima, and frogbit. The upper right container has UG and some hydrocotyle. The lower right has some microsword and dhg belem.
 
#7 ·
You want the water line ~2 inches lower than the top of your soil as a rule of thumb. This should be 0.5 inches to 1.5 inches of water. This is not really hard and fast, as I am finding a much lower water level keeps the soil very moist regardless. The higher the water level and the moister the soil, the easier it is to transition submerged growth to emerged, however.
 
#11 · (Edited)
WEEK 2: Update!

The plants have been doing great! Except for the micro swords and the UG, they died completely and mold/fungus grew on them. The hydrocotyle has had some dir off, but new emersed leaves are starting to sprout from the nodes! The dwarf hairgrass has also had die off, but it has started to root and new green leaves has started to come out! The water lettuce and salvinia has been dying, but the water lettuce has new leaves growing out now. The frogbit has died off completely, just a skeleton floating in the water. I added a peace lily in there as an experiment to see if it will survive; it wasn't doing great inside the house. Here's a pic of how things are doing.

P.S.
I also added some bacopa trimmings on Saturday, I'm seeing some die off...
 
#15 ·
I think I do, I get about 4 hours of morning sunlight everyday and about 30 minutes of setting sunlight. Also don't forget to add that we have great heat too! But anyways, there's plenty of water droplets formed around the tub when I open it every morning. How would you see that there's not enough humidity?
 
#18 · (Edited)
Update!

This last week was not so great because I've had some 100 gregree weather here, and basically everything was near dead. But today, I've noticed that the bacopa started to grow upwards, so it has started to grow emersed! The DHG, is brown, but in the middle, it has some green growth. The hydrocotyle is basically dead, aside from some green areas on the stem, so I'm still playing with it to see if it will come back. The water lettuce and salvinia were also dead from the weather, but I added some new ones and they are still green and probably adjusting. I also added some riccia fluitans in hopes of it growing emersed.
 
#25 · (Edited)
Update!
So I completely moved the whole setup of mine into my house, as it as getting very hot here, and my plants were dying. I put it under a standard homework lamp that says 60w and the tub gets about 4 hours of light everyday, and the plants are responding well to it. The dwarf hairgrass has started to root, and the biggest crown has sent out some runners! The bacopa is still not growing much, but I see emersed growth, because the top of the stem has started to point upwards. I'm still seeing if the pennywort will bounce back, but I doubt that. I threw away all of the water wettuce and salvinia that was dying, which means all of it, and started with a new batch of them. I also added to the water some bacopa clippings that I won in a recent RAOK. On Saturday, after a trim, I added some rotala clippings to the small containers, and I'm hoping they'll get emersed, because I heard that rotala species are hard to get emersed. Anyways, here are some pics of the current setup!
 
#37 ·
Bi-weekly update since some of you have asked for it!

The plants are doing great! The DHG has started to sprout runners and the bacopa has some new plants coming out of each node! This is such an exciting week for me! I literally check the tub every hour to see if anything as happened, just to take a glance at the plants and how great they're doing! Yesterday I added 2 new containers, one containing java moss and the other containing riccia. I also added some java fern and staurogyne repens babies into the stems container. I added another container without soil just to corral the floaters, as they were getting I to no-light areas.
 
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