Mr. Aqua 17.5 Riparium

[hydrophyte]

Hey that's looking great. I'm so glad that the Pandanus is growing well for you. As it starts to grow more new leaves you can trim away those old leaves that were hacked off on top.

[duff]

Now that you say that, I can see the wood! Is she the only fish in the tank now? (she must be very happy with all that space to roam around in)

[mdreher]

No...she's sharing it with 4 CPDs, a clown pleco, and the last remaining cory. She still totally digs it though.

[hydrophyte]

Any new updates for this tank?

[mdreher]

The tank is going really good right now. Everything is growing in nicely. I've only got one problem and I guess it's a good one to have. We just got a contract on our house so we'll be moving in a month. The problem is that I won't have a place to set back up for 4-6 weeks which means I'll probably be tearing this down. Anyone have any good alternatives for me or should I just look forward to the excuse of starting over

[sockfish]

Aha! I've been waiting for more pics on this tank--it's looking great. I'm thinking a Betta would be in heaven in this tank--thanks for the pics.

And hoping the job hunt goes well for you. It is nice to have a hobby to take your mind off things--sometimes I rearrange the tanks I have going just to have something to fiddle with.

sox

[klaus07]

Instead of a complete teardown why not be creative. Set it up at:
1 work
2 your mom`s
3 a chinese restaurant
4 retirement or nursing home
5 a library
6 health food store
7 garden center
8 doctors office

Then when you are ready for it bring it home.

[Wy Renegade]

Very nice looking tank, sorry to hear about the impending move, but sounds like its all good. To the list above, I would add

9. a local school

[mdreher]

Sox - I'll try to post some updated pics tonight. My female betta does great in this tank. She's sharing the tank with 3 CPDs, 4 Flame Tetras, 5 Pygmy Corys, 4 RCS, 2 Amano, and a clown pleco. I think I'm right at the max capacity for this tank. The great thing about rips is that you can rearrange the top portion pretty easily.

Klaus & Renegade - I like all those ideas....especially a chinese restaurant. I just don't have the time to stop by and take care of it, and I really just don't trust that someone else would do as good a job as me. I'm thinking what I'll probaby do is plant the riparium plants in a pot, bring them to work, and replant them once we get settled in our new house. For everything else I'll probaby bring them by my LFS and get some store credits. The LFS here is pretty awesome about hookin things up.

[duff]

Sorry to hear you have to take it down for a bit - not fun but for a great cause! New digs once your moved in and settled will bring a plethora of new ideas I suspect

Would your office let you set the tank up in your boss's office or the presidents office? They might appreciate having something so cool to sit an look at for a month to two - especially if they saw what it looks like now! Or maybe the LFS would use it as a loner for a month and you could get them into Ripariums and hope they stock Riparium related items in the future?

Anyway good luck on your move - are you going far?

[hydrophyte]

A really cool kind of setup would be something like what I was talking about right here...

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/ri...ml#post1814448

A riparium like that would just have slightly brackish water, an aragonite substrate, riparium plants in hanging planters (no trellis rafts) and a big manzanita stump right in the middle. A 65 would probably be big enough for a small group of Indian mudskippers and they woudl love to crawl around on the manzanita stump. I don't know if mudskippers can climb glass or trees and if it might also require a top(?). With a larger tank you could keep some microleps archerfish.

This would go together pretty easy. Since it would not involve any kind of paludarium construction taking up room there would still be plenty of space for fish. You would have a good start for plants with your Pandanus and then add these additional really cool brackish riparium plants...

• leather fern
• Cryptocoryne ciliata
• black mangrove
• white mangrove
• red mangrove

[mdreher]

I'd love to bring the tank to work, but I've only been there since January. I'm not really thinking the boss would dig on the tank. I'm actually thinking starting fresh would be pretty sweet. I really like the idea of going brackish. That could be pretty cool. I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.

[duff]

I hear you, would feel the same way being newer to a company. At least this will give you time to plan the next one and I like the idea brackish. Looking forward to seeing your new set up. Keep us posted on your idea's and thoughts. It gets pretty quiet over on this side of TPT We need to figure out how to get more people over here, lol

[hydrophyte]

One thing I would suggest with a brackish tank is to try to keep the water as lightly salty as you can. With that setup that I had I experienced some trouble losing a few mangrove trees because it was apparently too saline, even though I tried to slowly raise the salinity. I removed some of the salt by doing all of my water changes with just 2 tablespoons marine salt per 5-gallon pail. I'm not sure what specific gravity this yields (?), but the brackish fish that I still have in there (Cyprinidon variegatus) still seem very healthy with this less salty water.

Another really weird brackish plant that I am trying to find is the aroid Montrichardia arborescens. This is not an easy to find plant and definitely a collector's item.


Wikimedia Commons image... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mo...-_Suriname.jpg

[Wy Renegade]

Originally Posted by hydrophyte

One thing I would suggest with a brackish tank is to try to keep the water as lightly salty as you can. With that setup that I had I experienced some trouble losing a few mangrove trees because it was apparently too saline, even though I tried to slowly raise the salinity. I removed some of the salt by doing all of my water changes with just 2 tablespoons marine salt per 5-gallon pail. I'm not sure what specific gravity this yields (?), but the brackish fish that I still have in there (Cyprinidon variegatus) still seem very healthy with this less salty water.

Another really weird brackish plant that I am trying to find is the aroid Montrichardia arborescens. This is not an easy to find plant and definitely a collector's item.


Wikimedia Commons image... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mo...-_Suriname.jpg

That is strange. I was always under the impression that mangrove are brackish water plants - in fact many grow them in saltwater sumps or refugiums. Perhaps different species have different requirements? One thing I do know about them is that they have a huge element uptake, calcium I believe, but don't quote me on that. I know that several who tried them in salt tanks around here reported having to hugely up their dosing in order to maintain desired levels once the mangroves got any size to them.