…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 here I must say confidence is high. Also known as G H Nelson on UKAPS, Graham is one of the moderators / committee members of the forum with 7000+ forum messages and multiple ongoing tanks. From time to time he makes some of his surplus available. The really good news is the surplus comes from his existing setups so you can expect fully submersed adapted plants. No feeble tissue-culture weaklings!
Extra bonus, when you order something he tends to throw in a couple of ‘freebies’ in a sort of ‘lucky dip’ kind of way.
Plants were posted out quickly and arrived in great shape. The Blyxa is in the bottom pouch and three free lucky dip entries in the top pouch.
The lucky dip turned out to be (left to right): Hydrocotyle tripartita ‘Mini’, Bucephalandra sordidula ‘Blue’ and Micranthemum tweediei ‘Monte Carlo’.
Blyxa japonica
Hydrocotyle tripartita ‘Mini’
Bucephalandra sordidula ‘Blue’
Micranthemum tweediei ‘Monte Carlo’
The order was for six pieces of Blyxa, but happy I got eight good-sized portions. Everything looks top shape. I put six of the pieces around the bubble tube where the Rotala used to be and just for chuckles put two pieces in the low-tech Shrimphaus. Some searching seems to indicate Blyxa won’t be an instant-fail without injected CO2, and starting off fully submersed is at least one fewer major transitional stressors.
Blyxa japonica – centre stage
The Rotala‘s loss is Blyxa‘s gain!
I crept one piece up over to cover one of the big frontward entrances to the underworld underneath the mountain. This will give a little more cover to critters looking to hide for a bit.
Straight out of the pouch the Blyxa covers some good ground around the bubble tube. We’ll see how big this guy gets. I was hoping for interesting, but not out of control. Tropica lists the height as 10 – 20+ which means anywhere from ‘small’ up through ‘massive jungle’. Challenge accepted.
Micranthemum tweediei ‘Monte Carlo’
I have avoided MC in the Fireplace Aquarium on the grounds that it’s too difficult and requires higher lighting and more aggressive CO2 than I want to provide. I’m also a little gun-shy after the Marsilea experience which was pretty good for a long time, up until when it wasn’t.
I was also at a bit of a loss as to how to plant these three strings of MC. Eventually I figured to just tuck in both ends and see what happens.
Hydrocotyle tripartita ‘Mini’
Also in the ‘not sure this is a good idea’ category, Hydrocotyle seems like it could be nice, or could just wind up long and loose and stringy. I gave some Hydrocotyle verticillata a try in the Shrimphaus and it didn’t do very well there, but maybe CO2 and this more modest ‘Mini’ presentation will be the big rescuers in the Fireplace Aquarium. I placed the Mini just in front of the Echinodorus ‘Miracle’ on the right of the tank.
To be honest, I don’t even know what I want this Hydrocotyle to wind up looking like. Maybe a loose green mound of something? See, some people have these carefully planned out “It’s going to look like this!” way of aquascaping (respect), which is great and everything, and I try to make it vaguely sensible, but ‘haphazard’ could be a fairly applied critique if one were in a not very generous mood about it.
Bucephalandra sordidula ‘Blue’
Now this is an interesting one. I do like buce and have had a go with many over the years. In fact once upon a time I envisaged the Shrimphaus as primarily a Bucehaus – didn’t really work out and there aren’t actually any Bucephalandra in the ‘haus at the moment.
I tucked this guy in the middle of the mountain on the left side up against the aquarium wall. Seems like it would be a dark place but it actually gets a reasonable amount of reflected light from the wall. Joe Bob says ‘two stars – check it out’.
Low tech Blyxa
Because ‘extra plants so why not’ I installed two smallerish Blyxa pieces in the Shrimphaus. Seems like the sort of thing the shrimp might like to play around in. One piece went in the left just a little back from the front, and the other in the back right corner. This back right corner venue is pretty challenging – seems like should be a good place for something but hasn’t really worked out that way (yet).
Blyxa japonica – left midground
Blyxa japonica – back right corner
Filled in looks a little better
It did look pretty sparse after the first rescape so it’s certainly busier in the Fireplace Aquarium now. We’ll see how things pan out from here. I already see some interesting new red leaves on the Echinodorus ‘Hadi Red Pearl’, and maybe also on the Echinodorus ‘Aflame’. There is definite new growth on the Bacopa salzmannii ‘Purple’ which I thought was going to be green instead of purple, but now not so sure. Happily, the Limnophila sp. ‘Orange Laos’ seems to be quite a bit bigger than it was even nine days ago, so that’s promising. Potentially even the Echinodorus ‘Aflame’, which is supposed to be a feature plant, may be settling in reasonably well.
post-rescape
big rescape – end of part 1
big rescape – filled in