Emersed Tank Journal

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well if you had more, deeper water, im pretty sure fire belly toads could live in something like that. :good:
 
Ok, figured its time to update this since its been over a month and the tank has changed a bit and we've had some surprising developments. Here is what the tank currently looks like.
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Whats happened in the last six weeks

Shortly after I last updated this thread, I had my first problem. Some of the peices of P. Trichomanes started to get fuzzy. I made a thread on a different forum that has a emersed plant section. You can read it here if you want. Was given a couple different answers as to why things where starting to get fuzzy. Thinking it might be fungus I tried doing some spot treatments with a anti-fungus fish med. Lets just say I killed more of the fuzz applying the med than the med did itself :rolleyes:. One important thing to note is that I was told I had the water level too high and that it should be below the substrate. So I lowered it.

Then for about 4 weeks I barely touched this tank(I was busy). I misted it about once every 3 days, which took about 15sec. I would mabey look at it for a minuet, but that was it. The fuzzy stuff continued to slowly spread. It grew on the wood, the dead plants I never took out, the sand, and the P. Trichomanes. It grew the most in the shaded areas and took on a white color in some areas, But over all it remain very thin. One day I decided it was mold, which isn't really surprising considering the wet humid environment the tank is, complete with dead wood and some dead plants. In hindsight bias I should of saw it coming.

So for about 5 weeks things got moldy, mainly the P. Trichomanes. Which confused me since it was growing quite well. All the growths that where coming out of it where turning brown then molding and dieing.
about 6 weeks ago
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about 1 week ago
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Whats happened in the last week

I finally got around to doing some research on how to control mold. I ran across a article, about a guy in Australia using slugs to keep his bathroom mold free. So you can guess what happened next, two native Wisconsin slugs took up residence in this tank. I don't care for either slugs or mold, but at least slugs move slowly.
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Things I've learned: Wisconsin's slugs aren't as helpful as Australia's slugs, they will eat pennywort but not mold. Currently they are still in the tank and seem to be doing fine.

About 5 days ago I started to notice something, things where growing again even the P. Trichomanes! Since then things have taken off and I have noticed some surprising things. More so I think I know why the P. Trichomanes started dieing in the first place.

What died
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What grew back
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I'm thinking that P. Trichomanes might actually be a aquatic plant, it appears to have two different forms of growth. When I had the water higher it was growing in its submersed form. I dropped the water level so the P. Trichomanes died back and grew mold, then regrew in its emersed form. There is a piece left in my planted tank, its still tied to a rock and hasn't die or grown or even attached itself to anything yet.

Also it has started to spread! I can't figure out how it spreads since its so tiny but its spreading.
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The Fissidens zippelianus(?) is also spreading too.
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The pennywort looks like it has set up a flower bud.
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And lastly the long dead pellia has come back to life. Its been black for two months moldy for one, but I guess it wasn't dead. It looks alot different than when it died, so I'm thinking it might have a emersed form too.
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I think it did pretty good for a tank I've barely touched :lol:.
 
This is a really interesting tank... maybe one day I'll do something similar with my old 10 gallon... My orchids would love to hang in the top :)

as to why your wood on the left keeps on drying out while the one on the right doesn't. The one on the left appears to be mopani wood and the one on the right true bogwood. Mopani wood is much less dense than bogwood and this could be the reason it's giving you more trouble.
 
The flower bud on the pennywort is starting to open, their are also 2 other buds now. So its happy. There is water in the tank, its just all below the substrate so you can't really see it. Basically the roots of the plants are in the water the leaves are out. I also trimmed the plant in the center of the tank with the big round leaves(I forget what it is). The P. Trichomanes is still spreading and seems happy.
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Also a pic with a popcan to give a idea of size since, IMO the tank looks a lot bigger than it is. Also I need to buy some good tweezers or something, cuz getting things out of the tank and moveing things around is hard.
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Looks nice. Are you planning on eventually flooding the tank to see how it does? It would be interresting to see how the plants react to going from this to being under water.
I will keep checking in to see how it is progressing. I am considering growing a few of my plants this way to get more cuttings going. I will have to see which ones can actually be grown this way.

I love it so far. :good:
 
that is one great looking tank. kinda like the emersed idea of a tank. and to think i have a 2.5 gallon tank sitting around doing nothing lol
 
Update July 12th:

Its been a while since I updated this thread. I've changed out some plants for others. Things have grown in really well. But this tank might not be considered emersed any more, since only half the plants in their are emersed plants. The others are all non aquatic type plants. I added some dirt on top of the sand. But I was never able to get the P. Trichomanes to really spread, so I replaced it for some moss I found in my back yard. I also added some lichens to the wood and even two young purple violet plants (viola sororia) I got from the yard. The pennywort is going crazy, it has lots of flowers and is pushing against the cling wrap on the top of the tank. I added some more anubais petita to the tank, since I like how the emsersed ones are looking.
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