Planted tub experiment with no electricity

Too many and expanding
That’s why I’m looking into curating lots of it into some sort of nature wall.
I’ve been gardening for many years on and off, aquatic gardening is a whole new avenue and very exciting

 

@A new day

Don’t know how I missed this. Very nice.
Something I would like to try.
But I fear mine would quickly get smothered in algae

 

I feared the same, but pleasantly surprised. Give it a go and plant heavily with some fast growers in the mix

 

Morning sun only

 

Thanks @fux940510 @MariaS @f-fish

 

I need to source some cheap plants
Don’t know what options there are until things normalise

 

He took it up a slight notch with filtration (gentle flow, probably not necessary) as well as LEDs supplementing the sunlight. And of course a glass tank. But it’s kinda the same idea just more aesthetically pleasing. No fish.

He added a frosted sheet to the window to diffuse sunlight from a south facing window (our equivalent of full north) that gets sun the whole day.

 

The last pictures of the planted tub experiment. 3,5 months in it has served its purpose as a plant holding/ hospital/ propagation setup much better than expected.

Shrimp colony doing well and growing.

These are the plants left over after planting the 1,5m and giving away.

I bought a new glass tank (38L) for a full R295, and will soon transfer pretty much everything currently in the tub there (except for the new spiderwood, it’s just in there to be cleaned by the shrimp).

Will continue as a no electricity setup (sunshine tank) in the same spot for the time being, just a little bit more ‘scaped’.

 

A couple of days ago I transferred many of the plants as well as the substrate, shrimp and snails to the glass tank (same position). The dragon stone used to be in the 65L. Could add spiderwood twigs.

Water settling, livestock all good. Growth is good. With the power outage at least I don’t have to worry about this tank

Not sure what to do in foreground, the direction of the sun is from behind the tank... any ideas for low tech carpet? Daily ferts. Sunlight only.

 

Also, about 2 weeks ago moved the little 16L (scaping from scratch challenge) to the son’s room. It used to have a light when still in the racking system but access was a nightmare. Now also a sunshine tank, doing great. Plants immediately started pearling, which I can’t recall seeing with the LED.

I’m really warming up to this... obviously stocking is limited to snails, neocaridinas and perhaps cold water fish if space allows. This one has 2 minnow fry growing out, yellow neos (offspring of low grade red cherries in the 65L), ramshorns.

 

Thanks @GaryG ! Yeah interesting little experiments.
Have your hillies arrived yet?

 

Great, can’t wait to see them in your tank and suppose sometimes we just need to wait a bit for good things

 

Hope @GaryG chimes in. Fast flow, highly oxygenated water, around 20-23C (?) lots of algae and other micro-organisms