My Paludarium

[cockroach]

My other paludarium is filling in nicely as well.
Night view


Added an anthurium.


The pathos trailing off to the right is already almost 3 meters long.

 

[cockroach]

Had to move locations so the two smaller paludaiums took a knock. During summer vacation no thought to fill tanks when they came to the building so plants were hit hard.
However, the students took it upon themselves to clean up and trim what needed to be removed. Then refilled them.

Another student has a huge koi pond at home with a spring fed stream running into it. He has thousands of natural stream shrimp. He gave us a jar full. We add quite a few to the tall tank and the shrimp made short work of the algae. It is looking good again and is on the up and up.

We have added only 3 (2M1F) to the smaller tank as a test. We have also been playing with the water level to see how low we can have while maintaining all plant growth. The lava rock doesn't wick up quite as much water as we thought.

The new spot.


This tank was hit so hard. Happy the buce made it. It is currently unfiltered with weekly water change of 50%+. Will see what the 3 shrimp make of it.


This tank has rebounded really nicely. The wood was covered in BBA. Glass and decor had diatom and green algae everywhere. Magic shrimp work.


The two tanks FTS.

 

[cockroach]

What the tank looked like when the shrimp were added.


One of the new shrimplets.

 

[cockroach]

Two life science/biology students have been begging to build a bigger paludarium for the class.
After discussions and research, they decided what they actually wanted was a vivarium ........ for Dart Frogs.

So we took a donated tank from a friend that left the country and started planning.
We went to a plot of land being cleared and collected some wood.
Laid it out until they like how it looked. Then made some tentative plans for plants.
Today we siliconed in the first part of the support structure.

What we have so far:
The hardscape precariously balancing in place.


The virt of what it could look like:


We will continue to build it over the next 2 weeks then add some plants and let it settle.

 

[cockroach]

Got some work done in between classes and meetings.

Students working on it
s



Test run


The stream

 

[cockroach]

Built a little practice tank. A week or so ago.
I didn't have mesh. So I used an old t-shirt I wipe up with in the fishroom.
Holds and 2L or 3L of water
Plants from around fishroom
Hardscape all all scraps

 

[FrancisFloe]

Wow! Thanks for documenting the whole process!

 

[cockroach]

Wow! Thanks for documenting the whole process!

Found these as well

 

[fishguy1978]

Found these as well
View attachment 1535934View attachment 1535935View attachment 1535936

Are you just using a large grain gravel?

 

[cockroach]

Are you just using a large grain gravel?

No. Was initially going to do just that but then considered the overall weight and changed it.
I have used Leca expanded clay balls. Lightweight, don't breakdown and maintain shape. Also good surface area for bacteria.