300gal plywood paludarium project

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
need an update from the op
 
Thanks for the comments everyone.

jrpsaros;4620123; said:
How do the loaches look in the tank?

The loaches look great when they're out. They're usually out and about in the morning when they're hungry, but as soon as the lights go on they disappear into the background and hide all day. Unfortunately the tank looks pretty much empty for most of the day. The little guys that I got from you are the most outgoing of the lot. I also really like the medium-sized one with the thin bars.

I'm looking for some floating plants and dither fish to coax them out more.

@sashimimaster and Youglin: I agree and am on the hunt for some archers.

@matt.shanahan: To attach the broms I wrapped their stolons in moss and used cloth staples pushed into the roots. Some of the java fern rhizomes are attached the same way. Since the branches are foam it's pretty easy to just push pins or wire into it to attach plants. To attach plants to the ecoweb I cut a slit into it with a knife and just push the plant into the hole. Seems to stay in place ok. For the riccia I just took a handful and smeared it all over the ecoweb. The ecoweb is rough so it attaches pretty well.

@fishkeepingnoob: I think it's important to plan things out well with a paludarium, but you inevitably run into issues you didn't anticipate and learn a lot from the process. With a 20g I'd say just get started and see what happens. Feel free to ask if you have specific questions.

So far the tank is doing ok. A lot of the emersed plants aren't doing that well - they don't seem to like the constant flow of water on the background. I'm slowly acquiring more plants that will hopefully deal better with the wet conditions. The riccia seems to really like the clay areas and has started to green-up on the clay. It still doesn't seem to be doing that well on the ecoweb but I think it's still early. I'll add some more pics when things start looking noticeably different.
 
you may need more dead organice matter over the ecoweb to help establish a good root system and provide more of a foundation for the plants
 
I love it. I would love to build something like this on a bigger scale for an aro. Assuming he wouldn't jump out, but I'm sure a screen or something would stop that from happening pretty ez. Say something with 250 gallons of water space then build up the top. Archer fish would have a feild day in there is you up a couple branchs across the middle or something to put crickets on. They could probably shoot stuff off the walls and root system you have. I wanted archers for my 130 and was only going to fill it half way with water and have a above water root system to watch them in action. Very interesting fish.
 
Scratch the screen idea I see the sliding glass doors now. Couldn't see them on the pic I get from my phone till I zoomed in on a pic I saved :)
 
Could you adjust the water coming down the walls to only flow like 15-20 minutes out of the hour? That would keep the wall wet, but still allow the plants a good period of time where they don't have water actively flowing over them. They may tolerate that better than constant flow.
 
Amazing!!!! I only wish I had half the skills you do...this looks INCREDIBLE!!!

Hat's off to you!!!
 
Conner;4647440; said:
Could you adjust the water coming down the walls to only flow like 15-20 minutes out of the hour? That would keep the wall wet, but still allow the plants a good period of time where they don't have water actively flowing over them. They may tolerate that better than constant flow.

With my current plumbing setup, the only way to do that would be to manually turn the ball valves on and off every hour, which is pretty infeasible. The easiest solution would have been to have a separate pump on a timer feeding the dripwalls. Unfortunately, since I have it set up so the flow is spilt off of a single pump, the only way to do that now would be a solenoid valve on a timer. I've thought about trying to incorporate one, but I don't really want to spend the money and redo my plumbing setup so soon.

With the benefit of hindsight, if I was to do this again, I would have two separate filtration loops: the first loop would have a pump constantly returning water to the tank, and the second loop would have a pump connected to a timer that would turn on every couple of hours and the output would lead to a SCWD that would divide the flow between the two walls.
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com