Yet another planted bowl...(56k)

[jdm68]

A little while back I posted just a couple of pictures of my Newman inspired shrimp bowl within another thread, but I've had access to a VERY nice camera, and I've also had a good bit of growth, including the genesis of many young shrimp, so I thought I'd throw up some photos and start my own journal.

Born:7.7.2011

Specs:
~2 gallon spherical bowl
Miracle Grow Organic Potting Mix capped with Play Sand
Mopani Wood
Found Igneous Rock
13w Spiral CFL 10-12 hours a day

Flora:
Dwarf Hairgrass
Anubias Nana
Dwarf Baby Tears
Anacharis
Telanthera "Cardinal"
Fissidens Fontanus
Lesser Duckweed

Fauna:
5 Adult Red Cherry Shrimp
~35 Baby/Small juvenile shrimp
Cyclops
Planaria
Random gnats and tiny beetles who land on top of duckweed...

[jdm68]

A few different angles...

[NWehrman]

Looks great!

[jdm68]

I love macros as much as anybody...

[jdm68]

Just a few more...

[Wolfgang]

Very nice. Your shrimp must love the bowl a lot, I can see a berried female in the pic.

[DogFish]

Room temp? No filter? and sunlight from a window?

How often do you water change?

[FIT BMX]

That is just great looking, now I want to build one.

[jdm68]

Originally Posted by Wolfgang

Very nice. Your shrimp must love the bowl a lot, I can see a berried female in the pic.

I'm sure they enjoy it. I had 4(one died recently while berried...) females who were all berried together, and over the course of about two weeks all but one hatched. That pic is of a female berried for the second time in about a month. You can't see them in the pics, but there are about 30-40 babies swimming around too. Thanks for the compliment!

[jdm68]

Originally Posted by DogFish

Room temp? No filter? and sunlight from a window?

How often do you water change?

Yes. Not really a problem at this time of year, we'll see what happens in the winter.
No filter.
Light was in specs:
"Specs:
...
13w Spiral CFL 10-12 hours a day"

I usually change about 50% of the water about once per week. I siphon it out with an airline tube, and usually siphon it back in the same way.
Nothing added except primed water and small pieces of food:finely crushed flakes, crustacean pellets, algae wafer bits. I suppose I have added gH booster once, and will prob do it again...

[jdm68]

Originally Posted by FIT BMX

That is just great looking, now I want to build one.

Thanks! You should build one. Very low maintainence and only takes about 2-3 hours depending on what/how fast you can plant. The bowl I got at Michael's craft store. This is the 10 inch dia. bowl, and they also have an 8 inch dia. You can use your leftover substrate, and any random desk lamp with a new bulb in it. Obviously I added some wood at a price, but it isn't necessary. Good luck if you decide to build one.

[Akeath]

Wow...beautiful

[JSA]

That is just gorgeous. Do you dose at all? What about algae?

Julia

[jdm68]

Thanks Akeath!

Originally Posted by JSA

That is just gorgeous. Do you dose at all? What about algae?
Julia

Thanks! No, I don't dose anything. I have seen a little bit of melting/hole-ing with the anubias, but that may have been because it was an older emersed leaf. All the new leaves look great.
I put a bunch of telanthera in the bowl to start with, but nearly all of it melted, except the one single small plant in photo #4. I may shove some laterite into the substrate around that plant specifically(iron helps bring out the red in red plants).
I just started a 10g project to house the offspring from the parent shrimp in this bowl, and I'll probably get some Flourish for it, and then I'd end up using it in this bowl as well, just to see.
If I were to start a new bowl(which I very well may), I would make the substrate a bit deeper, and probably do more to pre-fertilize(laterite, root tabs, maybe osmocote), above what MGOCPM offers, which is pretty good already.

[jdm68]

Oh, and very little algae, I was brushing it off the sides with an old toothbrush, but now I have an indefatigable army of algae eating youngster shrimp to do it for me. The anubias at one point also had a kind of brownish dust/muck on it, which I believe was determined to be diatoms. I think that the duckweed on top has really helped to suck excess nutrient out of the water and block the light from being SOOOO bright, but I'm sure plenty of floaters would pull the same trick. I just got what I believe to be water spangles as a tagalong with another plant order, so I'm gonna throw those on top of the bowl to see how they do.