# El Natural Paludarium



## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

Hi all, I haven't posted on this forum since Nov of 2008. When I tried to log on again the forum didn't 'remember' my email and I had forgotten my password (and message to the administrator for help went unanswered), so I created a new account (my old user name was rlking). Probably not within the rules but I didn't know what else to do in order to post.

I have some experience with the Walstad method as I built a freshwater refugium filter for about 40 fancy guppy tanks with a dirt substrate back in the day. It worked well and I ran it for almost 5 years, until I took on a partner in 2013 and expanded my ranching operation. I was then too busy to maintain a fishroom with 113 tanks (3400 gallons). 

During the time the fishroom was up and running, I converted the tanks that were not in the refugium filter system that were filtered by sponge filters to Walstad tanks. It worked well and was cheap- I used soil from the field in back of the house, coarse sand from my horse training arena and excess plants from the refugium.

I recently sold my cattle and retired. So a month ago I dug out a 26 gal tank from a pile of old aquariums stacked up in the barn. This tank has the same footprint as a 20gH (24x12.5 in) but is about 5 inches taller. After much deliberation, I decided to try to build a paludarium to house fish in the water part and Dart Frogs on the land. I built a shelf out of egg crate light diffuser, installed a small pump and tube for a waterfall, and covered the shelf and background with Great Stuff foam. 

Since I had such good luck with a soil substrate in the past, I knew I wanted it in the water part of the paludarium. Like before I used dirt from the back yard and sand from the arena. I filled it with 7 inches of water and headed to the hills with the grandkids to look for some plants. I knew of a spring with watercress at about 7,000 feet and in March there was still patches of snow but we made it with my 4WD pickup. We headed home with the water cress plus a red plant and some moss from the bank of the spring.

I had also put together an order for the terrestrial plants. But it totaled over $120 from a terrarium supply company. I decide to wait until my next retirement check came in. Meanwhile I needed to go to town for supplies (town is 20 miles away) and decided to stop in at Walmart to see if they had any plants that would work. Over in the corner of the plant dept. was a little rack with tropical plants in 2 inch pots. I bought one of each kind. 8 plants for 21 bucks. 3 of them were plants I was going to order. I looked up the plants on the internet when I got home and 5 of them would work for the conditions I was trying to create. 

I did buy a few plants off the internet- java fern, java moss and three bromeliads. Here's the tank after about 6 weeks. 


Terrestrial plants from left to right- small cultivar of Boston Fern, geranium Rex, above a bromeliad Neoregelia Fireball x ampullaceal, behind the geranium almost hidden a Pothos cultivar, above two more broms- n. ampullaceal 'San Diego WBC94' and n. Zoe, front right- purple waffle plant, back right- peace lilly. 

Aquatic plants- java fern and two unidentified plants from Petco. What happened to the plants I collected???? The red plant turned green after two days, two days later it was covered in a gelatinous glob of bacteria?- fungus?. It didn't last too long! The watercress took off and grew like crazy, completely filling the area below the waterfall and growing 4 inches out of the water. After 4 weeks some of them fell over. With closer inspection, the stems were melting from the substrate up for about 3 inches. I had a little ammonia spike then (.25) so I pulled them out and the roots were 'slimey'. The two little pieces of moss are doing ok. One is under the right side of the fern and the other is under the purple waffle on the driftwood. Actually sagebrush picked off the dam of an irrigation reservoir. 

A couple of weeks ago my granddaughter wanted to put some goldfish in one of our stock tanks so we stopped by Petco. I bought two plants.

This one (foreground) was labeled as a crypt. I am reasonably certain it is not. I doesn't have roots- part of the plant was stuck between pieces of rock wool and stuffed in a pot. It wants to float and a rock was in the bottom of the pot to weight it down. I stuck the rock on it to keep it on the bottom. Maybe I should of let it float? It has doubled in size since I bought it. Any idea what it is?


This other plant was labeled as a stem plant and I can believe that. What type of stem? Poor iPhone pic but it has red stems and green leaves. It has also grown quite a bit. about 1/3 of the plants is new growth.

I am looking for a couple more plants. Something that would grow emmersed and is kind of sturdy in case a frog falls into the water and it needs something to crawl back onto land. Dart frogs are not great swimmers. Another plant that would grow on the edge of the shelf, fall over the edge towards the water, and break up and soften the ugliness of the shelf itself. 

Not a great tank but I thought some of you might enjoy something a little different. I am not in a real hurry to stock it with frogs or fish. I am thinking feral type guppies?, Galaxies?, or maybe even shrimp? for the aquatic fauna and imitators for the dart frogs.


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## Reediculous_nanotank (Jan 12, 2019)

This is a really cool build! I don't have much terrarium experience, but keep us posted.

You mentioned trying to hide the shelf with a big plant that could help the dart frogs climb out. What about a large Amazon sword that's mostly emmerse? Some leaves could probably grow from the water surface to the edge of the land area.

I know some people coat their great stuff in black silicone and then throw coco fibre in it before it dries. It ends up looking pretty natural in my experience.


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## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

Had to run into town to get some oil and filters for the tractor and other vehicles. They didn't have the right filters in our little town so had to go 60 miles to a bigger town. While there I stopped at a lfs and picked up a couple of amazon swords. One has short roundish leaves and the other has long slender ones. They were both labeled as Echinodorus but had no species name. Have to see how they look in a few weeks. 

While doing the build I experimented with silicone and coco fiber (and sand) but didn't really care for either one. I did press rock salt into the wet foam to give it some texture (later washing the salt out). I plan on replacing the reddish rhyolite rocks (found where I live) with some black basalt that matches the background a little better but I will haveto travel a ways to find some.


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## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

Added a few more plants this weekend. Stuck some Creeping Jenny cuttings from a flower bed at the house around the edge of the shelf hoping to break up the outline a little. I plan on training them to spill over the side and grow towards the water. (First photo)

I took another little drive into the hills and collected a couple plants from a stream. The second photo shows some tiny plants I found growing submersed there. The third shows a plant that was growing in the stream both fully submersed and partly immersed. I grabbed some that were fully submersed and planted them in the corner.

I had put some springtails and isopods on the land portion in order to start a bioactive substrate. When I add dart frogs the bugs will eat the droppings of the frogs and help break it down. Plus they will provide a little extra food for the frogs. I am starting to see quite a few springtails on the surface of the water. Proof, I hope, that the springtails have established a good population. 

Speaking of bugs, I have noticed hundreds of very small white critters in the water column. They move in little jerking motions so I am assuming they are cyclops. I suppose fish would take care of them when I add them.


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## aquabillpers (Apr 13, 2006)

This is so interesting! I bet someone could sit in front of your tank for a long time and enjoy watching the many life forms being natural.

When I was a kid and couldn't afford a filter, when water got cloudy I'd go to a local pond and get a mussel. These filter feeders would soon get rid of the cloudiness and I'd return them to the pond. After the first time, I learned to put the mussel in a small gravel-filled container - otherwise it would dig up the plants with its wanderings. (That was a boring environment but I don't think the mussel cared.)

I think watercress is a cold water plant. Here in PA USA it grows on the banks of trout streams where the temperature is in the 60's or lower.

Good lucK!

Bill


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## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

aquabillpers said:


> I think watercress is a cold water plant. Here in PA USA it grows on the banks of trout streams where the temperature is in the 60's or lower.
> 
> Good lucK!
> 
> Bill


I think you are right. Taking the plants from a cold water spring next to a snowbank in April and sticking them into a 78/80 degree aquarium was probably a shock to them. Plus uprooting them and moving them to a different soil probably didn't help either. However, I haven't given up on growing watercress yet.

I know a guy about 7 miles from me that has a hydroponics 'farm' with 4 greenhouses. He grows watercress as part of his crop. His growing spaces are heated by an artesian geothermal well. Pretty cheap way to heat his operation in Idaho winters. He grows it from seed- a variety that was developed in Asia several hundred years ago and is acclimated to warm water culture. He gave me the name of his seed supplier and I have some on the way.


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## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

I've taken a closer look at the little white bugs in my water column. The are tiny, less than 1/32 of an inch and don't really move like a cyclops. I notice that they congregate mostly near the surface of the glass. I think they are feeding on the biofilm growing there. I have a tight fitting glass cover on the tank and get quite a bit of condensation inside. The 'bugs' even crawl up the glass out of the water for an inch or so. 

I dug out the old microscope from my days of teaching high school biology and took a look. They are definitely not cyclops like I thought. They are much more shrimp like. More like a scud. They have legs and a two part whip like tail like a scud. I have been waiting for them to grow up and turn into something bigger but they won't. They stay small. 

Here's a very poor photo taken with my iPhone through the eyepiece of the scope. can anyone identify these critters?


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

could be scuds in larval stage.


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## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

aquabillpers said:


> When I was a kid and couldn't afford a filter, when water got cloudy I'd go to a local pond and get a mussel. These filter feeders would soon get rid of the cloudiness and I'd return them to the pond. After the first time, I learned to put the mussel in a small gravel-filled container - otherwise it would dig up the plants with its wanderings. (That was a boring environment but I don't think the mussel cared.)


I found this very interesting. I need to remember this and do it in a future tank. I am thinking of building another paludarium, a bigger one of course.

I am about ready to stock the aquatic portion of the tank. I am thinking shrimp, Red Cherry probably, but there are lots of interesting shrimp variants available. I went to one of the big box pet stores this past weekend to see what kind of shrimp were available. The girl working the fish department( she looked to be about 16) was talking to a friend and ignoring the customers. Another girl (looked to be 18 or 20) yelled at her from the other side of the store and said, "You GOT to get those fish that came in this week into the tanks!" After the sigh and eye roll (we have two teen age grand daughters living with us- I've seen that before) she started floating bags in tanks. Of the two bags in the shrimp tank, one had a label of '25 ghost shrimp'. The water had a close resemblance to milk, there was a pile of dead shrimp in the bottom and 3 were frantically swimming at the surface. The other bag had 5 RCS in it and two were lying upside down in the bottom. I didn't come home with any shrimp.

I also found a source of wild type Bettas. Betta imbellis. They look real interesting. I've worked with a couple of wild types before. Shrimp and bettas don't seem to be very compatible. Guess I have a decision to make.


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## mysiak (Jan 17, 2018)

Just a word of warning, freshwater mussels reproduce via parasitic larvae with fish as a host (they attach to gills as far as I remember). In the nature it probably doesn't cause major issues, but in a small volume of water many of them attach to a fish and they can kill it. Usually it's not recommended to keep mussels and fish together. It will be probably ok with a single specimen, but I would be cautious nevertheless.


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## aquabillpers (Apr 13, 2006)

Yes, mussels aren't very good long-term aquarium residents. But they are great filterers!

I've caught many fish that had baby mussels attached to them. They look like tiny black spots. They enjoy the ride and drop off when they get bigger. They don;t bother the fish.

Bill


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## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

A little update on the paludarium. The little white bugs have mostly disappeared. Their population growth and decline have mostly coincided with a light dusting of algae on the glass. The algae only lasted about a week as did the 'bugs'. During the algae outbreak I swiped a flashlight the length of the tank and counted about 140 bugs. Last night, after the algae had been gone for a few days, I only counted 15.



mistergreen said:


> could be scuds in larval stage.


I doubted that they were larval scuds because they were so small and I hadn't seen any adults in the tank. But now I think mistergreen was right. I read that scud larvae are 'almost microscopic' and I have seen a few small scuds scatter and bury themselves in the substrate when I turn on the lights the past several mornings.

I've stocked the tank this week with 10 Red Cherry Shrimp and 2 Azureus Poison Dart Frogs. The frogs are cute. Bright blue with black spots. They hide in the plants and are hard to find. I'll try to get a picture of them in the next week. The shrimp also hide well. I now have enough plants in the water that I only see one or two at a time. Makes me wonder if I still have 10 left. But the ones I see don't act like they are in distress in any way.

Also this week I did my first trimming of the plants. My purple waffle plant was taking over the tank and blocking the light from the aquatic plants. here's a photo after the trim. Most all the plants are growing and the peace lilly is blooming so I must be doing something right. The one aquatic plant that is not doing well is the Bolbitis heteroclita (right front, behind the rock).


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## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

Sorry, wrong picture.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Very pretty tank! I'm surprised that more people don't set these up. What do you feed the frogs?


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## rlking497 (Apr 23, 2019)

dwalstad said:


> Very pretty tank! I'm surprised that more people don't set these up. What do you feed the frogs?


When I built the tank I put leaf litter over the terrestrial substrate and introduced a culture of springtails and isopods. There are a lot of springtails and the frogs feed on them. I also culture flightless fruit flies and feed them to the frogs 3 times per week.

A poor photo of one of the frogs under a leaf.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Thanks for info. Those little frogs are so cute.


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