Aquarium Gardening Notes

The River that Ran Away to Paradise

I received a forwarded email today entitled "Most Colourful River In The World". I have no idea who first created the email. I wondered if its beautiful pictures were fakes. On left is one of the many samples attached in the email. It was not attributed to anyone.

I don't usually share forwarded messages. However, the pictures of the river and its underwater growth was so spectacular that I had to see if it was real. I did a little Googling. The underwater flora makes such nice colors, that I'm posting some of what I read about it online.

According to this post on fourwinds10.com, the river and its wonders is very real. The web site also includes dazzling pictures and video.

The Atlas Obscura website also has more information on the Caño Cristales. They write: "For a brief period each year, this unique Colombian river blooms in a dazzling multi-colored display." - Click here for Atlas Obscura article.

Seed for the Coming Season

Despite the snow we've been getting, I'm looking for seed and planting ideas for this spring's garden.

My garden box won't contain as many vegetables as it did last year. (See here for photos of the garden box.) I purchased strawberry plants from Raintree Nursery. I've ordered several fruit trees and bushes from them before. I like their service, and along with the strawberries, I ordered a couple cherry trees. The strawberries will most likely take half the garden box.

As for the other half, I think carrots and beans will do. I might also grow peas or cucumber off the edge of the box. With last year's garden box experiment, I've learned a few things about planting arrangement. For instance, broccoli did not do so well close to beans. The beans grow faster, then overtake and stunt the broccoli, which grows straight to seed without producing very much of anything. Same thing happened with radish. Beans did not give them a chance. However, planted near baby lettuce varieties, radish did fine.

As I mentioned in other posts, we have too much shade in our yard for a large vegetable garden. A garden box is ideal as it can be moved into the area that gets the most sun. Its elevation also eliminates the need to fence out rabbits and other small animals. However, peas hanging over the edge of the box get a regular trimming. I don't mind. They can't reach all of them. For larger favorites such as tomato or pumpkin and the like, I just make use of other spots around the house that get enough sunlight.

Here's a list of veggies that did well in my garden box.

• Beans: Matador
• Beans: Eastern Butterwax
• Beans: Early Yellow
• Carrots: Touchon
• Cucumber: Slicemaster (Planted on edges and left to grow down the side of the box)
• Beets: First Crop Beet
• Lettuce: I tried several types and blends.
• Radish: April Cross
• Peas: Oregon Sugar 2
• Peas: Super Sugar Snap

I purchased the above from Veseys. I heard of this company from my dad. He always ordered from Veseys for as long as I can remember. His gardens were splendid. This time, I ordered giant pumpkin seed and a book on how to grow this. This of course, is not meant for my garden box! Pumpkin and zucchini do very well in some spots around my house. I'm going to continue that trend with zucchini and the giant pumpkin just for kicks.

My last seed purchase at this time is a variety of giant sunflower, called Sunzilla from Renee's Garden. Sunflowers are a nostalgic childhood favorite. Dad gave me a spot in his garden. I always abandoned the garden to weeds mid-summer, but giant sunflowers didn't mind at all. I still remember the towering stalks and the huge seed-filled sun dials.

Last but not least, tomato plants can always be found somewhere around my house, but I prefer to just get potted seedlings at a local retailer instead of starting them inside from seed. That said, I have Chocolate Cherry and Ground Cherry packets I intend to use. That's part of the reason I started thinking about seed so early.

Shameless Plug

One of the things I do on a regular basis, like any good aquarium keeper, is a water change. Today was the day. A long time ago, I purchased a handful of red Platies. These little fish reproduced like wildfire. Now, I have too many of them. While I search to find them a new home, I resort to frequent water changes. Not only that, but on some weeks, I do a thorough cleaning of the aquarium glass, the filters, and the lighting. Sometimes, all that's needed is a water change. Once in a while, I also vacuum the substrate to remove any lingering mulm.

To keep track of all this, I use a free email reminder service. I use it to create a calendar of all my aquarium maintenance tasks. The service automatically sends me an email to remind me when it's time to do such and such a job. The service provides a calendar-style interface, and features such as reports. I can enter individual reminders that are sent once, or I can set these reminders on intervals, such as the ones I use for my aquarium maintenance.

 

Every week, on a specified day, the reminder service sends me an email reminding me to change the water, or clean the filter, so that my aquarium is always serviced properly.

By the way, retainthis.com is not just for aquarium maintenance. It's used for whatever reminding needs one can imagine, such as birthdays, appointments, to-dos and so forth. I called this post a "Shameless Plug" because the free reminder service I'm talking about, retainthis.com, is a website I created and maintain.  So there; a little cross-advertising, web 2.0 style.

Gardening in a Box

You might wonder what a backyard box with beans and broccoli has to do with aquariums. Nothing ... Nothing at all. Gardening is something I enjoy just as much as aquarium plants. And I can eat these! Take a look at my Garden Box photo album in the left-hand side column.

It's been a bit tricky gardening around here. I have large oak trees and a few evergreens that block the majority of sunlight coming into my backyard. Also, I recycle the leaves in the fall by mulching them and letting them decompose in the lawn. My lawn grows well, but given the shade and possibly all that mulch from leaves, I get poor results, except for astronomically large tomatoes.

So, I built myself a 4 by 10 foot box, painted it green and lined it with a painter's plastic to avoid rotting the wood and filled it with ten inches of garden soil. The bottom is a series of support struts and chicken wire. I poked a few holes in the bottom to let excess water drain out.

I didn't know if 10 inches of soil would be enough to grow things. With rain and watering, this compacted down a bit more. Results so far are very good. We've eaten several kinds of leaf lettuce, several servings of string beans, wax beans, peas, beat leaves, rutabaga leaves, white radish and we're waiting for carrots, broccoli, beats, rutabaga and a dozen cucumbers to finish growing. Not to mention, that I pulled out the lettuce and expect to have a new harvest of beans, beats and peas in late summer in its place.

I've learned a few things about placement in such a small space. First, broccoli would have done better had it been planted near the rutabaga and beats. The beans grow large and starve out too much sunlight. Some of the things I learned this year, I will apply in my planting next year. I will continue to add pictures to the photo album as I take them. Thanks for looking!

Downsizing my Aquarium Setups

    I've been very quiet this year. I've not posted on the health and status of my aquariums. Many changes have occurred buy mainly, I've downsized my setup to one aquarium. The larger 35 gallon is the only tank still running now.

    An explanation: When it comes to hobbies, I am not constant. I tend to leave them for a while and come back to them later. I have several projects on the go. I collect stamps. I like to grow aquarium plants. I garden by the square foot. I collect vintage home computers and hope to rebuild one some day, from scratch. I also like to develop websites. See my links page for some of the websites I maintain. Combine all this with work, a family life, a desire to breath fresh air ... and before long, I just end up not wanting to clean, trim, maintain three or four planted aquariums. Perhaps I'm just too lazy for that. Perhaps I don't have the talent or know-how to build an aquarium that maintains itself. Does that exist? My cousin says I should have passion. I just want enjoyment out of my hobbies. I don't want them to have a hold on me.

    I still grow a couple of very hardy aquarium classics such as vals and crypts. The varieties I have seem to do well under ordinary aquarium lighting with minimal maintenance.

    However, there's a newcomer to my setup. Aquarium gardeners will hate me for this: Plastic. Yes, I've added plastic plants to my tank during the last cleaning. I like the cartoon-ish colors of plastic decorations. They are easy to replace and don't need trimming. This accommodates me while I concentrate on my vegetable garden!

    What will become of this blog? I intend to continue posting about the products I use, the parameters of my tank, the fish, and anything else I change on the setup. I also have photos from years in the hobby. I'll upload some of them. I will also add posts about my back yard garden. This year, instead of gardening on the ground, I created a large box on legs (shown in picture), the height of a table. It's been extremely fun to watch this grow, not to mention, easy to weed.

Milwaukee Aquarium Society

The Milwaukee Aquarium Society is having its Fish-O-Rama Spring Swap Meet Sunday, May 3, 2009 from 10 AM to 2 PM.

Bring your family out to the Milwaukee area Sunday. The Fish-O-Ramas are fun events if you're into aquarium hobbies.

For more information, visit the aquarium society's website. www.milwaukeeaquariumsociety.com

FISH-O-RAMA

The Milwaukee Aquarium Society is having its fall swap meet FISH-O-RAMA Sunday, November 2, 2008 from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

This event is located at the
New Berlin Bowl
16000 W. Cleveland Ave.
New Berlin, WI

The admission fee is 2$ per person, or 5$ per family.


I heard about the Milwaukee Aquarium Society last year at a Madison Aquarium Gardeners' Club meeting at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I later attended one of their auctions and really enjoyed it. I probably won't attend the FISH-O-RAMA this year as I am busy with other projects.

The FISH-O-RAMA could also be a great way to swap your aquarium surplus. Contact the Milwaukee Aquarium Society for more information on how to reserve a vendor table.