Aquarium Gardening Notes

The Quiet Aquarist

From time to time, I quit writing altogether. I do not lack in things to write about, I just loose interest momentarily. This is phase. I tend to gravitate away from my hobbies from time to time and come back to them after a while.

I continue to maintain my freshwater planted aquariums, feed the fish, trim the plants, but I am currently not interested in writing about this subject. This is how it is with me.

At any rate, summer is here and there's plenty to do outside. I'll probably be back in a few weeks. Hope my articles have been useful to some. Get yourself outside for some fresh air. Enjoy the sunshine. Thanks for visiting.

Photo of the Day (#12)

Algae Eater
From my 2004 Aquariums
6/3/2008

This nice fish was sold to me as Siamese Algae Eater. I'm not sure of its real name. The fish was very hardy. It lived long and well in my aquariums but was a bit aggressive and easily uprooted plants.

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Photo of the Day (#11)

Hygro
From my 2004 Aquariums
5/21/2008

Hygrophila polysperma: This plant is a very invasive weed and cannot be sold anywhere in the US as far as I know. Makes a good aquarium plant though. Grows fast and looks great.

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Photo of the Day (#10)

Wispy Platy
From my 2004 Aquariums
5/21/2008

I tried to snap red Platy but I got this wispy side-effect instead. Thought it looked good anyway.

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Rex's Planted Tank Guide

Stumbled onto a good source of information for planted aquariums. Check out Rex's Planted Tank Guide, especially the page related to nutrients.

Rex's blog has good articles on lighting, water chemistry, CO2, nutrients, hardware, substrates and many other things related to freshwater planted aquariums.

Well...There's also a fruitcake recipe.

AquaBanners - Advertise your Aquarium Website for Free

For those of you who have a website about fish, aquariums, aquarium plants and so forth, there is a banner exchange service dedicated to aquaria. If you wish to promote your site, please give aquabanners.com a try. I am not affiliated with this site. I'm simply a hobbyist who has become a member and wish to let my readers know about the aquabanners service.

Here's more information on aquabanners.com:

AquaBanners.com is a banner network designed to help aquarium-oriented websites with limited or no advertising budget earn free advertising/promotion for their website to a target audience of the aquarium hobbyist online!

About AquaBanners.com
AquaBanners.com is a free public service designed to help aquarium related web sites advertise each other. The concept is simple: by joining, you agree to display advertising banners for other members, and they agree to display banners for you. You can decide what type of sites to advertise on and advertise for so you don't need to worry about inappropriate material showing up on your pages.

Photo of the Day (#9)

Little Umbrellas
35 Gallon Tall
5/16/2008

A new bunch of Hydrocotyle leucocephala introduced yesterday evening. It's the plant in the middle mid-ground with the umbrella-like foliage. Click here to see more pictures of this plant.

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Hydrocotyle leucocephala

I received Hydrocotyle leucocephala from aquariumplants.com yesterday. So it took a week to arrive. Not bad.

The three bunches were all much larger than I expected. That's perfectly fine. They're healthy. I introduced the plants to a 20 gallon tank from which I had recently uprooted three large Amazon swords.

The picture in this article shows some of the new Hydrocotyle leucocephala planted in my 35 gallon tall aquarium. It makes a nice centerpiece as it stands almost 1.5 feet tall. Click picture for a larger view.

Roots appear on every node. Perhaps this plants prefers to creep along the bottom, but there isn't enough room for this at the moment.

The leucocephala is different in that the leaf stems are not as long as those found on pictures of Hydrocotyle verticillata. If you look closely at the leaf structure in the photograph, notice that the leaf stem between the leaf and the branch is very short. Compare this to verticillata.

In every photo, verticillata grows similar leaf structures but on longer stems. The branches are usually covered in the substrate, leaving interesting umbrella-like shapes floating on to of small stems. I'm not going to get that effect with leaucocephala at the moment, but I can't wait to see how the plant develops in my aquariums.

Photo of the Day (#8)

Golden Tetra Tank
40G Breeder from 2004
5/14/2008

This was one of my first planted aquariums. I used straight tap water. The golden effect is probably coming partly from soft white compact fluorescent bulbs. I always enjoy the effect of Cabomba carolinia forests seen on left.

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Aquabid - Buy Aquarium Plants or Sell some too!

I've just listed my first live plant auction on a web site called aquabid.com. I have three large Amazon Swords seen in the photo. They take way too much room in my small aquariums, so I decided to try and give them away to members of an aquarium gardening club, but no one replied to my offer.

This is my first listing on Aquabid, so I don't have first impressions of the bidding process yet. However, I can say this: Registration and auctioning on Aquabid is free. The listing process if fairly easy. It's not as complex as listing an item on eBay but it does not offer such tools as shipping calculators.

If you would like to get my three swords, click on the following link. Thanks for looking!