My First Try at an Old Aquascaping Idea

Today, for the first time ever, I made a moss covered piece of driftwood. I was inspired to do so by Jason Baliban's presentation at Sunday's meeting of the Atlanta Area Aquarium Associsation, at which he delivered a Power Point presentation on the basics of the aquascapers' art, and then aquascaped a moderate sized aquarium, from the bare tank, up.

I did my bit of elementary aquascaping, this evening, by wrapping clumps of good old fashioned Java Moss around a branch, tying dark, heavy cotton thread to the branch, and then wrapping the thread in a spiral over the moss. A couple of such passes, one on each of two sides of the branch, sufficed for a pretty good cover. Then a few snips with scissors, where the moss came up in obvious loops between the wrappings of thread, served to obscure a good bit of the man made nature of the artifact. Fun. Easy. Pretty. Pictures to come.

My Planted 10 Gallon Aquarium

My Planted 10 Gallon Aquarium

The floating Amazon Frogbit, Limnobium laevigatum, was thriving then, along with the Hygrophila corymbosa to the right, the Hygrophila difformis, the taller plant on the left, and the Dwarf Amazon Swordplant, Echinodorus tenellus, in the foreground. There is also a tiny bit of the formerly dominant Myriophyllum matogrossense, a lacy bunch plant, in lower center right.

This was all grown using fermented-yeast-and-sugar DIY CO2, though I've since switched over to pressurized CO2 setup with a tank, regulator, pH probe and controller. My lighting is two 5500k 13 watt screw-in compact fluorescent bulbs in the original equipment somewhat funky plastic hood. I use Seachem liquid fertilizers.

The vertebrate population includes one male Platinum Guppy, who shows up as a blur about halfway from top to bottom, almost to the left margin of the tank. Also, five Neon Tetras, three Corydoras trilineatus, one Siamese Algae Eater, and two Badis badis. There were a couple of large pond snails, but I guess they died of old age. No other invertebrates that I know of.

This shot is, so far, the height of my artistry as a planted aquarium geek.

Added a new plant to the aquarium

I found a couple of bunches of Rotala wallichii at The Fish Store, up in Sandy Springs, last Wednesday. I didn't know what it was, but it looked healthy, and had that reddish tinge that I've been thinking would add a bit of spice to the aquascape. I took one of the bunches home for a mere $4.59. We'll see how the red color holds up under my lighting.

P.S. Here's a note from the future, from October 17, 2008, to be precise. The Rotala didn't hold up. I'm guessing that it needed more light than it was getting in my little tank, but maybe it was needing more nutrients, as well. There are a few small bits left, but most of it gradually turned to a dark brow mush.