I haven’t had much luck growing plants on the Shrimphaus river.  Mostly they dry out either immediately or eventually, or sometimes they rot away.  This roots and bottom bits wet all the time but leaves out in the air niche is pretty challenging.  Some internet digging revealed plants that thrive in this setting are called […]

After repeated struggles to grow emersed plants on the Shrimphaus river using a variety of substrate set-ups, I’ve switched over to actual LECA – lightweight expanded clay aggregate.  For this experiment, I’m going with two reputedly robust to low(er) humidity emersed growth anubias:  Anubias coffeefolia, and Anubias gracilis.  This is the second attempt with Anubias […]

It’s been difficult with the emersed plants on the Shrimphaus shelf.  Some descriptions of the tribulations below. Growing on the slate surface directly (doesn’t work) First I tried simply tying Chirstmas moss down in the flow on the riverbed to see if they would grab onto the river bottom, but that didn’t really work – […]

‘Pangolino’ from Dennerle is thought to be the anubias with the smallest leaves and thereby very suitable for nanotanks.  I’ve been looking for this plant for a long time but it has been consistently unavailable until very recently when I noticed some in stock at Horizon Aquatics.  As a bonus Horizon is also a sponsor […]

The goal is to get epiphytes such as Anubias or Bucephalandra to grow emersed in the open-topped Shrimphaus exposed to normal room humidity.  There is a lot of internet opinion, most of which says “forget it”, but some people have managed to make a go of it.  My first try was Anubias nana ‘Coin’  which […]

The initial concept for the aquaduct of the Shrimphaus was for water flowing over slate with epiphytic plants and mosses clinging to the slate under the water with leaves growing up out of the water.  That didn’t work out very well.  The underwater rhizome of the Anubias nana ‘Coin’ slowly rotted away, killing the plant.  […]