I wanted to share an updated photo of my 12G bookshelf aquarium. The aquascape is largely unchanged since the last photo, but the hairgrass has grown in a little bit. I also went to the trouble of removing the equipment for this particular shot. Notice the pleco in the back left. I put those guys in this tank when they were only a few millimeters long.

Rimless Bookshelf Aquarium - Click for larger image

I’m fairly pleased with this aquascape, although I’m not very happy with this Eleocharis sp. ‘Japan’ hairgrass. It just grows WAY too slow. Because of that and some beard algae on the rocks, I’m kind of getting the itch to rescape it. What do you guys think? Comments/critiques welcome!

I’ve finally been able to process a few more of our photographs from our trip to Juneau. It was amazing to go there during their spring when so many flowers and berries were abundant. Every trail we hiked on had a near unlimited supply of wild berries, be it salmon berries (below), nagoon berries, blueberries, or even watermelon berries to snack on. Ferns like alum abounded, as did the prickly medicinal plant, devil’s club, which had spines you definitely wanted to avoid. Fireweed fields made fantastic foregrounds to glacier mountain backdrops, while spruce and alder cones were also in no shortage. Huge stands of skunk cabbage had impressive flower stalks, while smaller sundews in the higher elevations proved varying habitats in the area. My favorite wild-flower there was the columbine flower, with a very unique and intricate construction. There are several thumbnails below that I cannot ID, so if there are any Alaskan plant experts out there, please leave a comment on this post or on the corresponding Flickr page.

Salmon Berries. (Mouse over thumbnails for titles)

I was out in the garden with the camera this evening and a small praying mantis was crawling over some of the bolting lettuce plants that I still haven’t dug up. I decided to take the opportunity to practice some of my macro photography. I caught the critter cleaning its legs in its mouth, much like my dogs do. I had never noticed the dark eye spot (or perhaps their actual eye) before. The spikes on their forearms look like something straight out of an Alien movie. All shots were using a Canon MP-E 65mm lens.

On Monday, I spent a very long overdue 7.5 hours working in my fish-room. The problem is that I have neglected my tanks for too long that duckweed and algae had taken them over. In addition to cleaning them up, I also decided to swap the stands the my 40G and 50G aquariums were sitting on to provide better light to my aquascaping tank (the 50G).

As you can see above, the two tanks sit side-by-side. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy job to swap their positions. I still had to drain the water, remove the plants, remove the rocks, remove the fish, remove the driftwood, and finally get help to physically move them. In other words, it was nearly the same amount of work as if I were moving to another house.

After getting the aquariums into their new resting places, I decided that it was time to re-aquascape the 50G. I didn’t want to change too much from how it was before, but I definitely needed to make some changes. So, I repositioned the wood countless times until I came up with what you see above.

Then, I replanted the Blyxa aubertii on the back left and added Hygrophila sp. ‘Guinea’ to the back right. Hopefully with some time, everything will fill in and look a lot better than it did previously. I’m still toying with the idea of adding the branches back into the scape to give the feel of a riverbank, but I’ll let the plants grow in a bit before doing that. Comments welcome!

On Saturday, we took our dogs on a hike at Gunpowder Falls State Park (Jerusalem Road) where we explored the trails there for a few hours. Little Gunpowder Falls river is a very pretty river, meandering across a large rock bed. Despite the name, we never came across any significant falls, however. Along the trail, one of our dogs discovered a toad in an unfortunate position; its back-end was fully engulfed by the unhinged mouth of a snake (see picture below). Elsewhere, the trail opened off to a large grove of poplar trees, which provided an impressive area of shade to everything beneath them. We also found a few fallen trees with basketball-sized fungus growing on them. All in all, it was a nice hike with the dogs at a location we had never explored before.

Little Gunpowder Falls (Click thumbnails for larger view)