Over the holidays, I decided to fill my Mini-S aquarium back up, and implement a new aquascape. It had been sitting dry for several months, as the room it once resided in got renovated, and I didn’t want to fiddle with the tank elsewhere during those renovations. This time, I decided to do a simplistic iwagumi-style aquascape with HC as the only plant. It took me about a week of tinkering to find the right collection of rocks, and to position them as seen below. I ordered 4 pots of Hemianthus callitrichoides from Green Leaf Aquariums, and planted it a few days later.

I snapped this picture a few minutes ago while feeding the fish in the rest of my aquariums. This is about 2-3 weeks after planting, and the only thing I’ve been dosing is Seachem Excel for a carbon source. Otherwise, I’m currently relying on the nutrients in new ADA Aquasoil (regular Amazonia and powder forms). I’d love to hear some feedback on the hardscape arrangement as it stands now.

Earlier this fall, we went on a family trip to Yosemite National Park in eastern California. We took a ton of photos while there, but I just haven’t had the time to process them until now. Since Yosemite is such a vast park, I hope to post these up separated by the area of the park from which I shot them.

We stayed in the south, so one of the closest sections of the park to our lodge was Mariposa Grove. Mariposa Grove is the section of the forest that features Giant Sequoias, as seen above. The Sequoias dwarf the surrounding redwoods and other evergreens.

The true size of these mammoth trees cannot be appreciated until you’re standing right beside one. Some of the swampy areas throughout the forest are full of horsetail (Equisetum sp.), sometimes fields of it.

Wildlife could be witnessed throughout the forest, particularly several species of rodent seen scurrying through the underbrush carrying the cones of the evergreens towering above. Below, the chipmunk-sized Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrel stopped to enjoy a treat among the pine needles.

Above our heads, birds hopped from tree to tree, and frequently we’d hear the hammering of woodpeckers on bark. Most stayed too far up in the trees for me to get good pictures of, but I was able to sneak up on a Northern Flicker (Red-shafted) Woodpecker and enjoyed watching him scavenge for food.

Several mountain streams trickled throughout the forest, leaving many damp areas for marsh plants to grow. Of course, the shade provided by the tree wouldn’t allow lush undergrowth, but I did spot this plant growing in several places. I have no idea if it is an aquatic or not.

The trails at Mariposa Grove are not very extensive, but we very much enjoyed exploring the area. I found many of the normal attractions (hollowed out tree tunnels in particular) a little kitschy, but once we got away from those, the pleasant evergreen aroma, scurrying animals, and dwarfing sequoias made for an extremely tranquil walk in the woods.

Many more pictures from Marioposa Grove are below:

My 50G aquarium is now an overgrown jungle of Blyxa japonica and Blyxa aubertii. There’s a little bit of Ludwigia arcuata and Limnophila sp. ‘Vietnam’ mixed in there as well with Narrow-leaf Java Fern carving out a place too.

On one hand, I’m really happy with the tremendous growth, as most of the tank is algae free minus the Eheim spraybar and a few older leaves. Also, the bristlenosed plecos that I have in here are continuing to churn out more fry than I know what to do with. The Apistogramma have a pretty good idea of what to do with them, however, but I still seem to have all females, and no breeding there.

On the other hand, the huge mass of plant growth has completely consumed the aquascape. Below you can see what the aquarium looked like shortly after planting. All of that same driftwood is still in the tank, but you wouldn’t know it, would you?

So, now I need to decide whether to simply hack back the plant growth to a more reasonable state or to rescape it altogether. I imagine that this will largely depend on how many plants I pickup at the GWAPA meeting next weekend!

We’ve started to get some cooler evenings as we’re days away from the start of Autumn. Therefore, I decided to begin the process of shutting down my raised brick pond for the year by netting out my mosquito controlling white cloud mountain minnows and bringing them indoors.

I had put a dozen outside in the spring, but so far I’ve netted about 20 adult sized fish, and quite a few tiny fry (2-3 mm). I’m going to try to collect as many of the tiny fry as possible and raise them in an extremely densely planted aquarium inside. I love putting fish outdoors, as when I bring them back inside, I almost always multiply the number of fish I have, and the colors on the fish are fantastic from all of the live food they’ve hunted down over the summer.

All of these minnows are going into my 12G bookshelf aquarium, which has a large colony of orange-eyed-blue-tiger-shrimp in it, plus about 50 juvenile bristlenosed plecos. This is a low-tech tank without any CO2 added and minimal fertilization, but there has a noticeable increase in plant growth since I’ve added the baby plecos and minnows. I guess they’re producing just enough waste to spur the plants on.

The baby plecos are also progressing pretty well. I’m keep their small bellies round and full by feeding them a mixture of veggie pellets, with earthworm or shrimp protein foods added 1-2X a week. Of course, I just noticed a brand new spawn of bristlenose in my 50G aquarium, so I’m overflowing a little bit with these fish at the moment.

Nevertheless, my 12G bookshelf tank is becoming one of my favorite aquariums to sit and watch. The bottom is always moving with shrimp and plecos scavenging about, and now the white cloud mountain minnows are constantly active in the upper water column. Comments welcome!

Last weekend I had the pleasure to spend the day at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Following Hurricane Irene, there were relatively few folks there, but the weather was fantastic. I wanted to share some of my pictures from the day’s excursion. One of my favorite exhibits at the zoo is the Amazonia exhibit. This exhibit features a huge aquarium with large Pacu, catfish, and my favorite, an Arapaima.

The exhibit also has a large rainforest area above the aquarium that has monkeys roaming, birds flying, and lots of plants from the Amazon region.

Outside, a young female orangutan was climbing around on the lines they have that allows them to get their exercise in full view of the visitors.

In a pool nearby, the american alligator floats still while enjoying the sun on a clear day in the park.

All the while, several lion cubs are chasing each other, wrestling around in the lion pit. At one point, these two cubs get a little too rowdy for papa, who was people watching up until that point.

The park itself is landscaped wonderfully, and for us aquatic plant enthusiasts, there are several wet areas to check out. The Nymphoides above were flowering while we were there.

Inside the small mammal house, an incredibly cute and popular meerkat stoically stood and peered at the crowd checking him out.

Likewise, in the ape house, this female ape was seated on a branch about 20 feet off of the ground, relaxing.

The lemur was bright eyed as always! And of course, the elephants were roaming around outside smile as the pleasant weather.

I was happy to see that the animals were all behaving normally after an earthquake and hurricane swept through the area in the same week. If you missed this story, many of the animals reacted to the impending earthquake prior any shaking. All in all, we had a wonderful time at the National Zoo, and recommend it to visitors to the area.

Several more pictures are available on my Flickr stream.