“High Tech” “Low Tech” plant filtering…

Hmmm. My fishroom is getting jungle-like. The vines are vining, and the plants are thriving. I think the windows being closed for the past few weeks, as it is now too cold to open them, has given them the humidity they love. There is a long, dark, cold winter ahead, and going into that room to do fish stuff while surrounded by the colour green, and maybe even a few flowers is going to be good. I may have to walk across a good stretch of snow and ice in the howling wind to get there, but that's what sandals are for.

hmmm... lunch in the fishroom, kinda like a picnic in the tropics

Calatheas hate me. I'm on my 4th! I've started using rain water now and I use a moisture metre to check before I water it. I still don't really know what I'm doing with it! I know they don't like to dry out, but they don't want to be wet either seriously, I mean, how do you even get that right??

double check the link I posted on growing them, they are kind of specific on lower light, & lower PH... mine are hydroponic, so they are certainly getting wet ( I know it's not the same )... but the article linked say's they like soft water, which is why I pulled mine out of my rainbow tank ( which is certainly not soft )... rain water should be close to neutral... the tank I have mine in right now is my South American tank with a Ph of 6.8, but working it down... hopefully... & mine is recovering with close to neutral water, so yours might be good with rain water???

I don't see a link? orbifolia gets enormous so it will be interesting to see how big you can get it!

I don't know which calathea I have, it's got little hairs all over it so I thought it was the Velvet variety...but mines green all over and I've only ever seen velvets with the purple underneath

sorry, thought I posted a link earlier... I guess I just quoted from the article

I have a soul philodendron in my 40 gallon tank. The interesting thing about growing the plants in water is that you can combine your aquarium with your indoor plants. I tried the crazy idea of growing a rabbit foot fern above an aquarium. I made a wire frame above the tank and covered it in plastic to keep the inside humid. The rabbit foot fern is thriving, and I don’t even water it.

The fern doesn’t even have it’s roots in the water.

If the roots touched the water, even barely, it would like even grow better, and pull some fish waste out of the tank

Magnum Man said:

If the roots touched the water, even barely, it would like even grow better, and pull some fish waste out of the tank

Click to expand...

Rabbit foot ferns are epiphytes, and use their furry roots to collect moisture from the air.

Newest Calathra, added to the soft water South American dwarf cichlid tank, as a hang on house plant…

Been thinking about adding more plants to the hang on tank filters… I see no reason every ceramic bio media section shouldn’t have a rooting plant in it

Doing some aquascaping and maintenance this morning, before heading outside for the day… so I’ve be having issues with the 10 inch air bars, with the lines coming off… coincidentally both in this tank, and this tank has 2 plant dams ( see that thread ) but there is one about 1/4 of the way across the length, and another at 3/4, that I have red root floaters between… with the floating plant dams I get kind of “dead” area in the center where the floaters are, so I moved the air bars along the back of the tank, between the floating dams this both gives me a little surface adjitation where the floating plants are, and the 2 Calatheas are hanging there this gives me some water movement around those roots, which is beneficial for both the plants, and absorption of waste out of the water… win-win… also makes it easier to fix the lines on the air bars if they should come off again… another win

Calathea Obifolia in the South American tank… a new leaf

Still actively experimenting... I was doing some reading the other day, & was surprised to see that Orchids do well with hydroponics... you know those prissy flowers that you add an ice cube each week, so you don't over water them... my tanks are mostly built in, so plants growing out of my tanks, are really only visible from the work area behind them, so no need for Orchids...

an update on the Monsteras & Pothos that are actually the filter media in in those old double cartridge hang on the back filters... they are all growing great, & the roots are growing out of the slotted pots filled with ceramic media... so far the roots are not encroaching in on the impellers of the pumps... sooner or later I'll have to trim the roots ( and the plants, eventually ) but the maintenance is actually less than the filters with regular filter cartridges...

on the plants growing in the hang on back pots, the Philodendrons, are the slowest growing, but all are doing well... the 2 varieties of Calathea's are doing great, & I'm adding 2 more varieties next week... I'm also trying a couple new plants... I've got a tea plant coming

Camellia sinensis​

for the Asian tank... they typically don't like to have the soil wet, hoping they will take to the hydroponics, like Orchids, I was reading about Tea plants & hydroponics, so that one is a maybe... I also have some little pots of Blue Nile Lilies coming

Agapanthus Africanus​

... to try in the African Tetra tank... they may grow too big, too fast, but it's worth a shot, even if I keep them trimmed enough, that they don't bloom... generally the faster something grows, the more they pull out of the water...

My Bonsai Willows are slower growing than I expected, though with a Bonsai tree that's not a bad thing... I expect they are rooting as much as they are growing right now, so once roots grow out of the pots, I expect the greenery will start growing faster, as that has been typical on all the aquarium potted plants, so far...

not mentioned so far in this thread, is the Marimo algae balls... I've been ordering 2-4 of them per month, and I have a topiary thread, where I started talking about this... I'm going to just make a standing 6 to 8 inch ring composed of 1 inch Marimo balls... I'm making a base, with a wire to use to form the ring... after I get enough balls here... I'll add that to this thread

BTW... new calatheas...

Calathea Ornata​

Calathea lancifolia​

I'm going line these up along the back wall of the South American tank, above the air bars, with the other 2 varieties, staggering a wide leaf, narrow leaf, wide leaf, narrow leaf...