No Maintenance Aquarium Garden

 

Water is the origin of life.
All living organisms depend on it dearly.

And oxygen, and some nutrition.
Those are fundamental.
A long-long time ago, some microscopic living forms emerged on Earth land from water.
 Eventually Earth land became the beautiful living garden we know today.

 To my friends who tried but fail to grow plants commonly potted in soil, I suggest to growing land plants in aquariums.
Make an aquarium garden.

Tiny aquatic critters and common pond snails that feed on algae are perfect for this purpose.
Here I pick some pond snails.

 In this example, I am going to setup two aquarium gardens.


Any glass jar or even clear plastic cups would do.
Though, the larger the better.

Add some gravel, rocks, seashells and such.

Different color rocks look nice.

Add aquatic plants.
Here I add hairgrass anchored with a seashell.

This leafy pondweed goes into a smaller cup.
More about this in a future video.

I add pond snails and a sample of water from the pond into each cup.
2-3 snails go into each nursery.
 Add dechlorinated water.

Here I add Hornwort, duckweed, and floating fern into the large nursery.
Use whatever plants you have.

Add a background for your aquariums.

I have already prepared covers for both aquariums.
Check my previous videos for more details about it.

Congratulations!
We have made self-sustaining aquariums.

Common green algae as in this tank, grows in all aquariums.

 Let me just add couple drops for you to see it.
Pond snails feed on algae.
Algae feeds on waste produced by snails.
And so it goes in cycles.

Seed shrimp are my favorite among other tiny aquatic algae eaters.

I have them in all my aquariums.
Here they go too.

So, here we have aquariums with different critters and aquatic plants.

 It's very important to always keep this tube above water level.

This design allows air circulation while reducing water evaporation.

Leaving it as it is, you may need to add water once or twice a year.

 Let's add land plants.
 Many different plants would do!
 Here I have a rooted cutting of Wandering jew plant.
It's a common house plant with leaves of a very lovely color.

 And it grows nicely with roots only in water.

Put the plant in the already prepared aquarium.

Ta-da!
We have made a self-sustaining aquarium garden.

I can keep this aquarium garden on a windowsill exposed to direct sunlight for plants, pond snails, seed shrimp, and algae to enjoy it.

All of them tolerate much warmer water than fish can.

This aquarium garden is for my friend Jo.
 Enjoy it!

There are many other land plants that grow with roots in water.
I grow in my aquarium gardens common houseplants, herbs and even succulents.

I breed dwarf guppies in larger aquariums like this one.

Here you can see a growing underwater Peace lily.

 Keep aquariums with fish away from direct sunlight.
 Aquariums with fish need some feeding, but no water changes, no man-made filters.
 They are very low maintenance.

Water evaporates mostly from leaves of plants growing on top of my aquarium gardens.

The larger the plants, the more water evaporates.
Trimming large plants helps to reduce water evaporation and it's an opportunity to share cuttings with friends ;)

Have fun and happy aquarium gardens :)