Category Archives: plants

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I just caught the male pepperi (they’ve been renamed) dropping the kids off at the pool.

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In other critter news, hydrophyte inspired me to re-do the 29 gallon aquarium in the Design Student’s room. After losing all the inhabitants during the ice storm, I repopulated it with an African butterflyfish (Pantodon buchholzi) and a pair of upside-down cats (Synodontis nigriventis).  I’d seen a beautiful West African setup in Yoshino and Kobayashi’s The Natural Aquarium – combine that with a chapter on ‘The Aerial Advantage’ in Walstad’s Ecology of the Planted Aquarium and all I needed was a glimpse of hydrophyte’s ripariums to precipitate a new approach to the tank. I covered the back wall with plastic needlepoint grid and tied Java moss, Anubias and Bolbitis to it; I’m hoping the moss will expand to cover everything. I took the water level down to 10 inches – approx. the golden ratio point –  and I planted most everything so that it has the opportunity to grow emersed. We’ll see what happens.

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I changed the filter set-up – without the filter change, the lower water level would have been a problem. I had been using an external hang-on-back style filter – I switched to a piece of foam the same size as the side of the aquarium with a small powerhead behind it. You can see the foam on the right side of the picture above.

I also snuck in a juvenile pair of Pelvicachromis sacrimontis – love those dwarf cichlids.

Yesterday was the three year birthday of the blog – I was too busy being a crazy natural historian to post, but thanks to all who have stopped by over the past 3 – it’s been fun (for me, at least).

U-ren Ishii

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Utricularia reniformis Giant

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Seventy-five percent of the purpose of this post is the horrible play on words title. The other bit is to show off a picture of a bladderwort I picked up yesterday at the Black Jungle BBQ. Both leaves and blossoms of this utric get huge and the flowers are beautiful. Keep your fingers crossed!

Nerdism

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I realize this is not the sort of display behavior that brings all the girls to the yard lek, but I’m OK with that. I yam what I yam, as a famous mariner once said. From back to front – fancy Swiss aquarium filter foam scraps I’m saving for God knows what reason, an envelope full of Blubberbot, on top of the bot – a transmitter for (next thing down) a remote bownet release and finally an aquarium controller that is tasked with turning the lights over the vivaria on and off.

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I’m messing around with a macro lens –  also trying out an extension tube that will allow me even closer shots, but I haven’t gotten as far as the extension yet. I need to work on depth of field; in olden times that meant shrinking the aperture/cranking up the f-stop with an attendant longer exposure time (if I remember correctly). Some thing may have changed as we switched from film to CCDs, but I’ll bet optics remain much the same.

A bamboo shoot

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A tree peony

Some local wildflowers

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I took the camera along when I ran the dogs this morning and I’m glad I did. Wildflower season is well underway. Unfortunately, we were out before some of the flowers woke up.

Trout Lily – also known as Dogtooth Violet, but I’m of the opinion that anything with trout in the name is a winner (see: Trout Fishing in America, Trout Mask Replica).

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Trillium

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Marsh Marigolds

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And a slide show of the rest.

NHOS Orchid Show

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If it’s February, it must be orchid show time (here’s last year’s trip). I’m going to spotlight three little guys.

Mediocalar bifolium – from the cloud forests of New Guinea and some adjacent islands. The combination of white outer and red base makes me think of a partridgeberry flower/fruit mash-up.

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Pleurothallis truncata – from montane Ecuador. Quite a few pleorothallids like to sent their flowers out from the center of their leaves – I picked up a P. palliolata for the big viv – when/if it flowers I’ll post some pix.

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Masdevallia tridens – another cloud forest orchid from Ecuador. Cloud forest plants are often gorgeous, but almost always tricky to grow – lots of light, lots of humidity, lots of air movement and cool, stable temps – conditions that are not easy to replicate.

Orchid nano-viv

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A great Flickr find – a couple days ago Karlboms orchids favorited a picture of mine; as I usually do, I backtracked to see what sort of things they are up to. Jackpot! Aside from being the EpiWeb people (a material that’s generated a lot of discussion in the dart frog community) they are also doing some amazing things with small vivaria for orchids. I’ve put the following together by running down various threads on the Orchid Source forum.

The core (literally and figuratively) of the setup is a terracotta drain pipe.

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A sheet of glass is siliconed to the bottom, the pipe is filled with water, a piece of EpiWeb is used as a cork (to keep the water in the pipe from becoming algae-choked) and in the latest incarnation a piece of rubber cord is wrapped around the pipe to secure specimens.

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An obvious warning – rainwater or RO water only – and a less obvious one – fertilize from the outside only.

As Ron Popeil would say, “But wait! There’s more!” Mikael encloses the pipes in lexan tubes.

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On the first picture you see the top of the lid on the nanoviv. I have cut out a piece of the glass to allow air to pass out.
Under the glass you can see the PC fan that circulates air inside the cover.
The light set-up is made by using 12V halogen lamps that sits on a metal strip that is covered with copper foil. The lamps is attached to and connected to the “rail” by very strong neodym magnets. This allows me to move the lamps freely and makes a minimal fixture.

nanotop1

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Here you can see the way I mount the fan. By using neodym magnet (one on each side of the cover)I can set the fan in all directions without destroying the plastic. (this fan is from another vivarium). I use fans that are only 40×40 mm.

nanofan

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Really amazing stuff – you can see the entire nano-viv Flickrset by clicking on the picture below.