…continuing on from the Big Fireplace Aquarium Rescape, it was clear after only a few days that the Rotala ramosior ‘Florida’ wasn’t going to make it. That meant a new prime-position real-estate opportunity for some lucky plant. Blyxa japonica to the rescue! New plants from nelson131 (ebay) Nelson131 is another new vendor for me and […]
Read more →Category: Fireplace aquarium
Planted aquarium using CO2 injection with fish+snails+shrimp; project-specific notes and maintenance.
It was time to fresh up the look in the Fireplace Aquarium again. The last major rescape happened 8 months ago and things had pretty much gone over to jungle status. I also was noticing some of the dreaded black beard algae coming up on the roots of the Anubias barteri ‘Mini Coin’ on the […]
Read more →Beginnings of Niade We got started back in late summer 2019 with what is now essentially a public-facing workbook and journal, concerning in the first instance a freshwater aquarium that was going to have live plants. Once upon a time hosted at egads.uk and subsequently rehosted on niade.com, the project has mostly stayed on topic, […]
Read more →Schismatoglottis prietoi, apparently increasingly known as ‘Philippine anubias‘, is a brilliant aquarium plant with an unpronounceable name so don’t let that put you off! Schismatoglottis prietoi requires almost no maintenance This what makes this plant so special. A lot of aquascaping plants go through a number of stages. You first get them and they are […]
Read more →The Fireplace Aquarium was looking pretty overgrown and I hadn’t done a water change in a couple of weeks so time to get stuck in for some maintenance. For me, once I get going on this kind of thing it tends to get a little more vigorous than first anticipated, but it has a way […]
Read more →Having some red in the Fireplace Aquarium gives some nice contrasting colours. I picked up some AquaFleur Rotala rotundifolio ‘Blood red’ to see how that would do. Red aquarium plants There are lots of good choices to provide some red colour in a planted aquarium. I had very good success previously with Ludwigia palustris mini […]
Read more →I picked up some banded panchax, also known as clown killifish, for the Fireplace Aquarium. The local fish store (LFS) only had four of them and they were all female. This is because the males have showier fins so mostly that’s what people buy. Nevermind – I think the females look great. Friendly LFS person […]
Read more →Recently following a heavy rain one of the residual current breakers (RCD) on the main breaker box of the house tripped and could not be reset which took down half of the lighting and almost all of the wall sockets. I strung up a network of extension leads to the one remaining live socket (for […]
Read more →It’s been a challenge to find an epiphyte that looks good on the mountain. I tried Anubias nana ‘Snow White’ which failed to grow, and the similar Anubias nana ‘Pinto’ which grew fine but looked too big for the nanotank. Also in the mix was Bucephalandra caterina which grew well and kind of resembled a […]
Read more →I have been using 600 g disposable CO2 cylinders to provide CO2 gas to the Fireplace Aquarium and that has been pretty good. One cylinder lasts two or three months and they are a reasonably unobtrusive size. Recently though I have been going big. Welder’s Warehouse has a two extra-large cylinders combo deal. Each cylinder […]
Read more →