Tree Frog Visit!

July 9th, 2008

I was inspecting my beast of an Amish Squash plant the other day, and on one of the neighboring zucchini leaves, I noticed that a tiny little frog had taken refuge. In past years, I’ve always had bullfrogs and common pond frogs take residence in my raised brick pond, but I’ve never seen a tree frog in my backyard before.

Gray Tree Frog

Doing some research online, I suspect that this is Hyla versicolor which is supposed to be one of the most common tree frogs in my area. The common name is the Gray Tree Frog.

Gray Tree Frog

He wasn’t particularly fond of my camera, and kept inching away from me. Quite typically, he had to have a piece of mulch stuck to his back, so that I couldn’t get an unencumbered picture.

Gray Tree Frog

I love the pads of tree frog’s feet, when spread out, gripping the surface of the leaf. It’s amazing how similar these local frogs are to their Amazon counterparts that I photographed last summer. Of course, the coloration of those frogs were a bit brighter in many cases.

Gray Tree Frog

After chasing this guy across a few zucchini leaves, I decided to leave him be. I hope he stays around for awhile, as a small army of frogs might come in handy once the squash bugs and cucumber beetles arrive!




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2.5G Scape – 1 Week In

July 7th, 2008

My 2.5G aquascape is now planted, and a week old. I haven’t really seen a ton of growth yet, but I’m hoping that the plants are just getting themselves acclimated to the conditions. I am running pressurized CO2 into the aquarium in hopes that it will speed things along.

2.5G - 1 Week

The plants are pretty bread and butter type plants for a nano tank. From left to right, in the back I’ve got Downoi, Narrowleaf Java Fern, and Java Fern ‘Trident/Fingers’. In the foreground, there’s Hemianthus callitrichoides (HC) and Anubias barteri var. ‘nana petite’ in the midground. I’m going to need to thicken up the downoi a little bit, and let the HC grow in, but otherwise, if those two things happen, I’m pretty happy with this aquascape. As always, I would love some comments/critiques.

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2.5G – Start of a Winner!

July 2nd, 2008

I’ve finally gotten around to setting up my 2.5G tank for the GWAPA MemberĀ  Nanoscape Contest. I tore down the soil experiment tank, and loaded it up with a small 3L bag of ADA Malaya Aquasoil that I had on the shelf for over a year. I ordered a bag of Malaya and Africana awhile ago to compare them to ADA’s Amazon, but haven’t had the opportunity to until now.

2.5G

Malaya is a bit lighter in coloration than that of Amazonia, and has little flecks throughout. For the hardscape, I’m sticking with a porous mossy rock only composition, largely because I don’t have any pieces of driftwood small enough with the amount of character that I’d like.

2.5G

This is my first attempt in terms of positioning the rocks. I haven’t fully determined what plants I’m going to use yet, so I’m going to have to update this more once I figure that out! In any case, any suggestions on the hardscape?

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