Thread Revival: 10 Gallon Planted Paludarium

[Tenzo]

So it's been about 2 years since I started this project, but due to the the lack of some time and money, I decided to put it to a halt until recently, I began to take interest in completing it. Accompanying this will also be a little write-up just in case some of you want to try this too. So bringing back from the old journal I made:

On my first shopping day:
I'm creating a paludarium for some fire bellied toads and some cheap fish or something of that nature, semi-aquatic. I'm trying to make it low-tech to begin with as much as possible, and later on will upgrade it. Also, I'm a high school student, so money is important right now. I'm trying to make it as cheap as possible. So here's what I got in stock at the moment with 40 dollars going to Walmart, Petco, and Michael's Craft Store.

10 Gallon Tank from Petco - $10 (1$ = 1 Gallon Sale!!!)
Duetto 100 - Old filter I found laying around
Styrofoam (Breaks easily and used for plants) - $3.99 for 6 blocks
Flora Max Substrate - $4 CLEARANCE SALE AT PETCO!
Eco Earth Coconut Fiber - $4
Sphagnum Moss Substrate - $4
Dark River Sand - $4
GE Silicone - $4

I bought all of this for 40 dollars (including tax), not bad so far.

[Tenzo]

After getting all the things pictured above, with the styrafoam blocks, I cut them and designed them to make my platform for the land area in my paludarium, siliconed them together, and siliconed sand onto the surface for a more natural look. Tomorrow I'm adding another layer of sand and other bits of bark or coconut fiber.

[Tenzo]

Now once I finished the structural part, I siliconed coconut fiber to the back of the glass and the platform to the glass as well. After some neglect, the styrafoam turned a little brown from having contact with the dry coconut fiber, pretty neat. Now I added some rocks, driftwood, siliconed some of them on, made special carvings out of the styrafoam to hide my filter and make plant pots.

Here is the hardscape, somewhat finished to get the look I want. I still need to add more sand and try to find some tree bark to silicone to the rest of the tank.

Feel free to leave some comments or suggestions.

[Tenzo]

Now for the more plant technical stuff, where I'm most worried about. These are the plants I wish to have:

Emersed: Pothos, Mondo Grass, Hairgrass, Pennywort, java moss/terrarium mosses and some crypts. Maybe some sanservia, selaginella, dichondra, or adiemtum, but I still need to do more research on those since I;m more experienced with submersed. This is my first time playing with emersed plants.

Partially Sumbersed (planted on top of driftwoods, right at top of waterline at 6"): Java Fern, Crypt Parva, Baby Tears, Java Moss

Submersed: Anubias nana, crypt parva, crypt wendtii, duckweed, pennywort, subwassertang, maybe 4 leaf clover if my lighting is sufficient

Now as for my lighting, I currently only have a 15w, so I'm going to start with the low light plants, work my way up and upgrade the lighting to cfl and a full hood to keep those toads (if I decide to get them) from escaping. At the moment its just a standard hood light with custom-cut glass.

In using the plants in my scape, I plan to provide a lot of cover from the blocks of styrafoam, I plan to make a little moss wall along the bottom and have crypts/anubias cover that and then the taller plants towards the back left, behind/around the driftwood. Rocks for the foreground, kind of like the way a waterfall is.

Other Information:
Ferts: Just root tabs (trying to get oscmocotes)
May inject CO2 after I upgrade my lighting.
Filtration is taken care of via Duetto 100 that pumpts it up and into the little trickle/waterfall thing on the right side and the small 180 L/H water pump from ViaAqua.
Small 7.5 Watt Heater (Only 5-6 Gallons of Water)

Fauna: 2 Fire Bellied Toads
Some Guppies
Maybe pygmy cories? I'm not sure, as I hear that the toads are a little toxic. Guppies are hardy fish, they will never die lol.
My mind is still a bit decisive here, but maybe instead of guppies, you guys know any hardy live bearers?

[travis.808]

Ok, I'll stick around.