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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 11:14 AM

    Oh noes it's getting direct sunlight! Might not be too bad as it's only in the mornings and only winter sun - summer sun is too high in the sky to reach so far into the room. Let's hope all my plants don't lean to the left (like I do) 😅

    Also, rainbows!

    More wood and moss coming today - along with a small water pump and a heater, to use if necessary (classic freshwater tanks are all about water filtration, movement and tropical temps, but it may be secondary with the Walstad method - we'll see)

    The nano cube tank is being lit from the left hand side, and a prismatic effect somewhere in the glass is throwing rainbows into the wall and floor next to it.
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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 12:02 PM

    At some point I'll clean the glass too and fill it up a bit more properly - but as more stuff is going to go in this week and next, I need some water clearance for my forearm 😅 💪

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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 9:38 PM

    I also received some moss balls today, I cut one up and pushed it into a few of the cracks and crags in the two pieces of wood... Yeah!

    And some limnophila sessifloria is coming some time next week, which should grow fast and fill in the back.

    I can't say I'm not pretty pleased with myself right now!

    Will the plants hold up? No idea. There's the odd yellowing leaf in there already. But right now it looks nice :)

    Two twisted gnarly pieces of aquarium safe driftwood are sitting on a black tray in a bath tub. One is sort of craggy and pointy like a sharp rock, the other has a gnarled lump of roots at its base with a trunk or branch twisting up out of it. Dark green moss (hard to see) is wedged into any gaps I could find. A whole moss ball is in front of them.
    The view of the left hand side of the tank with the wood placed within.
    The view of the right hand side of the tank with the wood placed within.
    The view from the front. There are taller stem plants behind the driftwood, a bunch bright green, a bunch red-dark-green. In the midground are shorter plants, one set lime green, stems with round leaves going up them, the other with longer, red-green leaves all coming up together from the substrate. A number of pretty pebbles and lots of low, clover-like green plants are scattered in the foreground.
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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 7, 2026, 5:46 PM

    Turns out my phone camera does pretty well at high magnifications!

    My tank has life! Very small life.

    The wriggler by the water surface in the video I'm hoping is a detritus worm instead of a mosquito larva, I'll keep an eye on it...

    Under the reflective surface of the water, a white wormy thing is having a disco party.
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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 7, 2026, 5:48 PM

    Apparently I can only do one video per post - so here is a small white creature of some kind making its way down the side of some driftwood:

    A brown cliff-face looking piece of driftwood has a white dot whirling and spinning its way downwards.
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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 7, 2026, 5:52 PM

    Finally, some little whitish somethings in the water - I think this is swimming rather than Brownian motion, though I cannot be completely sure...

    Still quite impressed that I can use my phone to help me see my new pet microfauna 🥰

    Some bright green stalks and small leaves have some small grey-white dots floating around seemingly purposefully in the water around them.
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  • Kevin Papstkevinpapst@phpc.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 11:21 AM

    @sarajw Following your progress here, looks nice! Please share further updates, curious how the plants look in 2+ weeks.

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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 11:25 AM

    @kevinpapst yes I'm curious too, we'll see how well they survive!

    I have some limnophila sessifloria stems coming in the post hopefully next week which should add a little more lushness.

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  • Kevin Papstkevinpapst@phpc.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 11:29 AM

    @sarajw They look really healthy for tap water and considering that they were shipped via post. Didn't think that was really possible. They were planted into the soil with the sand holding them in place?

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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 11:55 AM

    @kevinpapst I pushed them down with some tweezers, most of them probably haven't reached the soil, but hoping they'll send their roots down there.

    There were only real roots on the clover-alike "Cuba" in the front - I gather that might not be the ideal variety for this tank but we'll see how it goes. The mid-fore-ground long leafed red thing had a few baby roots - the rest all came as a bunch of stems.

    They're not in super deep. But without much water movement, they've not come back up. Yet.

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  • small cypresssmall_cypress@indieweb.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 11:24 AM

    @sarajw it's gorgeous!! I keep a UV sterilizer for occasional green water from direct sunlight. Can't wait for it to fill in!

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  • Danrtfm@social.lol
    Nov 5, 2026, 9:59 PM

    @sarajw This looks gorgeous already! And don’t worry about the yellow leaves, it’ll be older leaves dying off, common enough after transplanting. They’ll grow new, bright green leaves soon enough. :)

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  • Sara Joy :happy_pepper:sarajw@front-end.social
    Nov 5, 2026, 10:04 PM

    @rtfm yes, I've heard of like, a transitional melt. Fingers crossed!

    I only learned in the last week or so that some of these plants grow both in and out of water, and they look really different in both forms - and that one form can turn into the other but its leaves will die off and regrow to fit where it is now.

    Nature is cool.

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  • Danrtfm@social.lol
    Nov 5, 2026, 10:32 PM

    @sarajw Yes! Nature is awesome. They can grow different roots depending on whether they’re in soil, water, or something else. Versatile and resilient things, plants.

    We should be very grateful they grow as slowly as they do.

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  • VerdeVivoVerdeVivo@mastodon.social
    Nov 6, 2026, 6:40 AM

    Cutting up moss balls to tuck into the wood cracks sounds like a really creative way to set things up.

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